


whirlwind in the thorn tree

by spacenarwhal



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Implied/Referenced Depression, M/M, Post-Season/Series 02, Unreliable Narrator, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 04:24:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8563960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: The work wears him thin but he can’t stop. Not now. Not ever. This is who he is. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. He doesn’t have anyone to pretend for anymore. (The freedom isn’t as liberating as he’d thought it would be, leaves a bitter aftertaste in his throat, but Matt swallows that with the rest of his regrets and carries on just as he always has.)[Post-S2. The new year brings Matt lost friends, old foes, and second chances.]





	

January is a miserable month.

It brings a new year but more of the same erratic rain, the same bone-biting wind that cuts through coats and scarves and slices over his exposed jaw while Matt’s out on patrol. 

He goes out nightly now. He heads out early, creeps along shadowed rooftops and drops into darkened alleyways, fights muggers and thieves, scares off kids who reek of desperation and looking for any way to survive.

It’s child’s play after the tangled mess of the last six months, the explosive confrontations of the summer and the slowly crumbling decline of the autumn that brought him here. He searches for straggling members of the Hand, loss still burning inside his veins, but there’s nothing to find. He’s not naïve enough to believe they’ve left the city, not after last time, but their trails have long since gone cold. They’re nothing more than rumors, whispers in the dark he can’t find the source of. 

The work wears him thin but he can’t stop. Not now. Not ever. This is who he is. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. He doesn’t have anyone to pretend for anymore. (The freedom isn’t as liberating as he’d thought it would be, leaves a bitter aftertaste in his throat, but Matt swallows that with the rest of his regrets and carries on just as he always has.)

Tonight, he circles the city, finds a perch atop a block buildings still under reconstruction (he can hear squatters shuffling around inside, smell burning newspaper and shivering bodies trying to escape the cold). He listens, strains his ears in the winter air to catch the muted sounds in the distance. Screaming. Fear. Pain. He takes off in a run, throws himself into the gap between two buildings and catches himself on the railing of a fire escape and swings himself upward, cuts through the city like a blade in the dark. Matt barely stumbles when he lands. He runs until the cold is irrelevant.

He stumbles home with dawn breaking over Hell’s Kitchen, icy air still stinging inside his lungs.

Matt strips in his living room, peels the suit off with numb hands, knuckles aching from more than the cold. Sweat chills on his skin, makes him break out in goosebumps all over, leaves him shivering even as he slips beneath the blankets, sinks into cool, soft silk and pillows that smell only of him. All around him the building starts to wake, groaning pipes and footsteps and rising voices, noises building over one another, demanding his attention. 

Outside rain starts to fall. It hits the rooftops first, trails over the windowpanes like fingertips roaming over exposed skin. Inside, Matt closes his eyes and tries to conjure the memory of warmth.

-

Another night. Another circuit. Another fight. 

He manages to disrupt a brothel masquerading as a hotel, beats a man bloody and then listens as cops flood the scene, waits for Brett’s voice to join the fray before he limps away, one hand curled around his ribs where someone managed to land too good a blow with the butt of their automatic rifle. Nothing’s broken but it’s going to hurt tomorrow. (It hurts now.)

He stops to catch his breath on a roof a few blocks away and doesn’t realize where he is until he’s cleared his mind enough to get a sense of his surroundings.

Foggy hasn’t moved, not yet anyhow. Matt’s glad for it, can easily picture him, asleep in his tiny apartment with the squeaky floorboards and ancient pipes, the perpetual scent of instant ramen emanating from the kitchen walls. Matt used to have a place there, a standing invitation to the lumpy sofa—and one New Year, to the empty half of Foggy’s bed, when they were both too buzzed to care they weren’t in college anymore—remembers eating greasy pizza at Foggy’s second hand coffee table, a game on in the background and Foggy’s color commentary at his side.

He’s sleeping now, pulling in the same deep curling inhales Matt used to keep time by on those insomniac nights when he couldn’t sleep in their dorm room, head full of sounds and body tense, trying to block out what felt like the whole world. Foggy’s heartbeat is measured, slow and peaceful. Matt lets his eyelids drop shut behind the mask. He listens. 

They haven’t talked since Christmas morning (if a text can count as talking). Foggy sent him a single message Matt listened to at least a dozen times. 

(“Happy birthday Jesus!” Foggy cheers, too loud and too early a wakeup call and Matt swears he is never spending Christmas with him again. If Foggy knows how little goodwill Matt feels for him just then he obviously doesn’t care, throws himself down on the air mattress next to Matt with so much force he almost tosses Matt to the ground. Foggy lifts the fuzzy blanket off his face, looms directly over Matt and exhales an unpleasant mixture of spearmint toothpaste and gingerbread directly into his nose, at odds with the smell of pine and the coffee already brewing in the Nelson’s kitchen. “What?” Foggy asks innocently, “This isn’t how the nuns used to do it?” ) 

Matt kept his answering text short before deleting the whole conversation.

It’d been tempting to text something January first but Matt had thought of Foggy, hungover and groggy like he usually greeted the New Year, and hesitated. Foggy hadn’t initiated any conversation either and that made it easier to tell himself it was for the best. That they could make a clean break. (That’s what Foggy asked for and what Matt wants. That’s what Foggy deserves. Matt owes him that much. He knows that now.) 

He loses track of time standing on that rooftop, stays until the sun chases him away. 

-

He still goes into the office some days. Foggy always did say he was a glutton for punishment. 

It’s his now. Not because Foggy cleared out his office or because Karen walked out the door and left nothing behind her but the stinging impression of her hand on Matt’s cheek. It’s actually his. On paper, in the books, the office belongs to him. 

The news had come as one more surprise in the wake of Elektra’s death and Stick’s departure, the final breathes of Nelson and Murdock long since faded from the air, an unbidden gift Matt still doesn’t know how to feel about. 

He doesn’t know when she did it (when she decided to stay with him maybe) or what she meant by it (Elektra had always spoken of Matt’s life with patronizing patience, like it was only ever a matter of time before Matt came to his senses and grew bored of it, threw it away. And even if it wasn’t boredom that moved Matt’s hand in the end, she hadn’t been entirely wrong on that front).

What Matt knows is that now he has an entire building to his name, the loan he and Foggy signed off on together paid in full with enough left in the company’s bank account to cover utilities for the next decade if he so chooses. He stayed away at first, his days occupied with scouring the city for any traces of the Hand. But the warehouses are all empty now, the giant cavern in the ground filled in with rubble. Their presence in the city has been erased, like the bloodstains on Matt’s carpet, though the scars of the fight remain everywhere, jagged to the touch. 

There hadn’t been enough hours in the day when he was trying to juggle a day job and nighttime corporate espionage and the Devil’s responsibilities, but without the firm days felt endless, formless. The full force of his fruitless chase throughout the city landed a debilitating blow and left Matt no other choice but to go back to his desk. 

(“I’m working again.” He tells his father’s gravestone on a Sunday afternoon, the damp grass soaking the knees of his jeans when he bends down to leave an apple. He left orchids for Elektra, felt it necessary to bring Dad something too. Matt touches the cold face of his father’s grave marker, battles that ever-present guilt he feels for failing to do the one thing his father ever asked for him.)

On the days Matt can remember to set his alarm when he gets back from patrol, he goes in. He pulls himself out of bed, all stiff limbs and sore bones, shrugs on clothes that hide the worse of the bruising and wraps his swollen knuckles around his cane. He feels like a proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Clients trickle in slowly, people in need of help who are desperate enough to seek it in him, a man who willingly went to bat for a murder and lost. It’s mundane work mostly. Wills. Letters. Domestic affairs. A few of them seem unsettled by the emptiness of the place. Matt’s almost gotten used to it. Really. 

No one asks where the Nelson half Nelson and Murdock is. Hell’s Kitchen is small, news travels fast. Matt tells himself it’s for the best and that it’s time he orders another sign. After all it’s not as though he can’t afford it. Still, no matter how slow his day is he never gets around to it.

-

It was only ever a matter of time before this happened. 

Matt tenses, listens to the shuffle of impatient bodies in close quarters as another joins them, the dizzying aroma of brewed coffee cut by the citrus notes of Foggy’s preferred brand of hair care products. Someone pushes against Matt’s back moments before the clerk calls for the next customer to step forward. He doesn’t have to pretend when he falters, cane dragging on the sticky laminate flooring. “Sorry.” The woman behind him mumbles, but Matt’s ears are tuned to the quickening beat of Foggy’s heart that means he’s realized Matt’s there, that he knows Matt knows he’s there too. 

Matt places his order with a steady voice, steps to the side to wait for his coffee. There’s four more patrons before Foggy reaches the counter and Matt can almost hear him oscillating between leaving and holding his ground.

Foggy stays.

Matt licks his lips, tongue dragging over the ragged edge of a partially healed scab. He thinks of what to say. He can’t get pass ‘hello’. Foggy places his order. Large dark roast with soy milk this morning rather than his usual vanilla latte. Foggy must have pledged clean living as his New Year’s resolution like he has almost every year Matt’s known him. This year, Matt didn’t bother making any resolutions for himself. Last year he promised Foggy honesty, for all the good that did either of them. He doesn’t see the point of making anymore promises he can’t keep. 

Foggy pays cash, drops his change into the tip jar with a jangle of loose coins before he comes to stand off to the side with all the other customers waiting for their orders. Matt swallows, listens to the nervous uptick of Foggy’s heart ringing out from his chest. His own heart quickens, keeps time with Foggy’s across the divide—a few feet and a handful of people, all oblivious to the duet playing out around them.

Matt leans on his cane, impatience biting at his spine as the silence carries on. He could bump into Foggy on his way to counter, force his hand, but Foggy won’t resent him any less for doing it. Matt could say _I’m sorry_. He is, but not for the things Foggy wants him to be, not for Daredevil or the choices he’s made to keep this city safe.

Matt keeps to himself and waits.

Someone calls his order and people move out of his way so Matt can make his way back to the counter. The barista places the cup in Matt’s outstretched hand, the heat of it bleeds into his fingers, soaks into his palm when he curls his hand around it. To his left Foggy’s breathing shifts, a barely there pause, but his heart hammers on, his pulse uneven in his veins. Matt hesitates, stands rooted in place, waits for Foggy to acknowledge him— _say something, say something, please_ —but Foggy swallows, feet dragging backwards half a step before his back collides into the wall. Foggy doesn’t say anything. 

Matt presses his lips together, teeth digging hard into the cartilage. He nods, a quick jerk he can’t be sure Foggy even sees. He smiles at the barista as best he can and makes his way back into the early winter morning. 

-

There’s a struggle in a warehouse off the waterfront that catches his attention, draws him in. The fight is over almost as soon as he arrives. One of the men is carrying a rifle similar to the heft and build of the one that caught Matt in the side a week ago, but Matt disarms this one easily, lands a solid punch to the center of his face that drops him before he can shoot off another round. He kicks the gun away, moves towards the back of the room where the would-be victim is scrambling to collect their things, breathing quick, heart still beating rabbit-quick behind their ribs. Matt catches the scent of jasmine and strong-black coffee and realizes who he’s saved. “Karen.” 

“I’m alright.” She says shortly, digging through her bag, fills the room with the disjointed sound of items knocking together, paper crinkling.

This isn’t the first time they’ve met this way. There’s already been two other occasions when their leads have overlapped, drawn them to the same ends. For all her physical familiarities, meeting her like this is like meeting her for the first time all over again, Matt still reconciling his memory of her with this new severity with which she cares herself, the reproach in her voice. She isn’t the shaken woman Brett introduced them to in the precinct, or the woman Matt so desperately believed he could love. 

When he thinks back Matt can recognize pieces of this Karen in everything: In her fierce defense of Castle, her open admiration of the Devil’s brand of justice, her unfaltering quest for the truth, whatever it might be. He used to believe it was circumstance that brought those qualities into existence. First Fisk, then Castle, that things would calm and she would become whoever it was he imagined she was in his head (that soft hand cradling his head in the stillness of the office when he wasn’t sure he could take another step, promising him he wasn’t alone). 

“Thanks, I guess.” She rises from her crouch, stands still and steady in front of him, daring him to say something. Though this is hardly an arrangement, she’ll accept Daredevil’s help with the same begrudging willingness with which Brett does. It’s Matt’s face she doesn’t want to see. 

“What’s the story?” Matt asks, tries to keep his voice measured because anything else will be met with Karen’s angry silence. There’s still a note of concern he can’t strip away entirely, even if he’s lost the right to worry about what she or anybody else decides to do. 

Karen shrugs, movement jerky as she shoulders her bag. “Not sure yet. Castle took down the Blacksmith but now it looks like there’s a new player in town. The cops don’t have a real solid lead yet and no one they’ve picked up yet is talking.” She’s too good at what she does, Matt thinks, fully aware of his own hypocrisy. “Any of that ring any bells?” Karen asks, brushing hair out of her face.

Matt shakes his head. “Not yet. I’ll keep an eye on it though, cut it off before it gets any bigger.” He says. Hell’s Kitchen might be quiet now but it never stays quiet long. (Matt will be ready this time; he won’t let himself be taken by surprise by another storm.)

” _Right_.” Karen huffs a short breath. “Hope we can stop meeting like this.” 

-

Snow falls through February. He can hear kids complaining about how there isn’t enough of it, hungry for snow days and an excuse to throw things at one another. It’s still enough to dampen the world around him, blunt the edges of his perception, creates the haze of white noise he associates with winter. His nights are doubly tiring now, his abilities stretched to their limits as he tries to sustain his bearings and keep his footing.

The night he does fall he lies on the ice-slick roof, panting up at the night sky. He feels small in a way he hasn’t felt since he was a child, ten or eleven and drowning in raw sensation. Tonight, it’s the cold at his back and the scent of wet garbage in his nose and the steam that rises out of the grates on the streets and clings to his skin. It’s the sirens and screams and innumerable voices, all of them strangers, the taste of winter air, tinged with car exhaust and yet unfallen snow closing in around him. The city feels massive and Matt feels insignificant in comparison. If each man is a world than the city is a galaxy, endless solar systems existing in congruence to each other, some bisecting, most of them without knowing it. Matt wanders among them without orbit. 

He keeps still for a second, breathing, then pushes himself back up. He keeps moving. 

-

Claire’s new apartment is smaller than her last one, but it’s still warm and smells like the particular blend of green tea and lemongrass she prefers to coffee late at night. The first time he popped up at her window he thought she was going to turn him away entirely but Claire had just held a tense silence before stepping aside. “Try not to bleed on the couch, it’s new-ish.”

He tries not to come here often, knows she doesn’t need his shit messing up her life more than it already has. Last he heard she’s still looking for a job since the incident at Metro General. Matt tried to apologize for that once and was thoroughly rebuked for it, “Like I said before Saint Matthew, you’re not the only one who gives a shit around here.”

Tonight, Matt hisses at the pull of the needle just left of his right shoulder blade, listens to the in and out of Claire’s steady breathing, her agitated heart. Matt had been trying to close in on a drug den and stumbled on an arms trade instead. He hadn’t managed to catch them unawares as well as they’d caught him. 

“This is gonna scar.” She says evenly, pulling another stitch closed. Potter’s work is good but it still isn’t impervious to blunt force and a sharp blade in close quarters. 

“Have you talked to our mutual friend recently?” She asks lightly after a few more minutes of silent work, severing the medical thread with a clean snip. 

“We have a mutual friend?” Matt absentmindedly probes his tongue at the cut inside his cheek. It’s hot, seeps sluggishly and fills his mouth with the taste of blood. He’d miscounted tonight, hadn’t been able to make out the other three men until they were on him. A rookie mistake that burns through him like a fever. 

“Sorry, I _forgot_. You’re a lone wolf now.” Claire’s touch remains professional but there’s an edge to her voice, simultaneously unimpressed and disappointed. 

“He’s fine by the way.” Claire says, and Matt’s brow furrows, tries to pick through the blur of pain and fading adrenaline to figure out what he’s missed. “The new job is treating him just fine. Jones keeps him pretty busy from what I hear. Apparently he’s as much a magnet for trouble as I am.” Something bubbles in her voice, mischievous, “Some might say you have a type, Matt.” _Foggy_ , he realizes, and manages to feel even worse than before. (“Such an overachiever, Murdock,” Foggy commiserates with a heavy hand on Matt’s shoulder, “That’s always been your problem.”) 

“Didn’t, uh, know you two were friends now.” Matt says ignoring the jab, resists the urge to hunch away from the sticky adhesive of the tape she uses to secure gauze over the wound. Claire pauses. “Maybe it’s time you left your bat cave and joined us out in the land of the living again.” 

“I get out.” Matt mumbles defensively and Claire sniffs indelicately, pulls off her bloodied gloves with a snap.

“Don’t pop my stitches.”

That night he crawls into bed and wonders if Foggy ever asks about him. Matt tells himself it’s only the wound on his back, the pulsing heat of it that itches between his shoulders, keeping him awake. 

-

The first time he goes to court after the Castle case he represents Mr. Gabriel whose employer owes him and twelve other men like him back wages. It’s straightforward, an open and shut case, the employer’s guilt thoroughly documented in their own books. It’s almost too easy. In the end when the judge rules in their favor Mr. Gabriel shakes his hand and thanks him, voice painfully earnest and genuinely relieved, and Matt remembers not everything needs to be a battle. Some injustices can be righted without bloodshed. He doesn’t know when he allowed himself to forget that the Devil wasn’t intended to be the first line of defense. 

In the courthouse bathroom he takes his phone out and almost messages Foggy. _What else did I forget?_

He doesn’t of course. He’s almost too afraid of the answer. 

-

There are more run ins. In coffee shops and restaurants and bars. Hell’s Kitchen is miniscule but Matt’s never felt so suffocated by it as he does now, trapped by this silence Foggy won’t break and that Matt has no right to broach. 

It’s easier, somehow, with Karen. Karen at least will speak to Daredevil even if she doesn’t listen to his warnings to be careful. Matt knows, beyond a doubt, that if he tried to approach Foggy in the suit Foggy would probably take a swing at him. 

He gives wide berth to Foggy’s building during his patrols. He can write the first time off as a coincidence. The second as a mistake. But the third time is the start of a bad habit Matt can’t afford to nurture. 

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t think about it. Knocking at Foggy’s window after a rough night, rapping his knuckles against the glass and apologizing even as he creeps inside. It would be easier to say _I’m sorry_ for waking him in the middle of the night than it is to apologize for everything that’s brought them here. Less complicated. 

Matt spends his days brushing away the same insubstantial daydream ( Foggy’s arms wrapping around him like when they were young, pulling Matt in and holding him close, telling him things will work themselves out). He imagines Elektra laughing at him, voice somewhere between delight and disgust. “No need to act like one of those dogs, _Matthew_ , all downtrodden with your tail between your legs, begging for attention.” 

Matt’s honestly surprised the day the front door to office swings open and Foggy walks in, breathing quick after taking the steps two at a time. He smells like coffee and sweat. His face is hot despite the cold February air and Matt wonders if it’s from the walk or anger or distress. He’s facing Matt for the first time in months and from his seat it’s almost like Foggy’s heart is beating a greeting all its own for Matt to hear. He’d missed hearing it from this short a distance. 

Matt wonders who Foggy sees in front of him.

His face can’t be too bad, he’s sure the swelling in his lower lip has gone down by now from that fight a few nights ago. He resists the urge to touch his lip to check. He can’t remember the last time he shaved.

“What the _actual_ hell Murdock?” It’s more a demand than a question, voice tight with anger. Foggy doesn’t bother with any type of pretense before he’s setting something down on Matt’s desk, something long that lands heavy on the surface of the desk and upsets the coffee in Matt’s mug. Matt keeps his hands curled over the edge of his desk, wonders what has Foggy more upset, that he’s here or what’s inside the box. 

He can smell the roses before Foggy’s even lifted the heavy cardboard lid off the box. The scent of them fills the office as thickly as it clings to Foggy’s hands and clothes, sticks in Matt’s nose. 

“A little early for Valentine’s Day, don’t you think?” Matt’s voice rises at the end without his permission, his eyebrows itch together.

“Is this a joke to you?” Foggy snaps, leaning forward to brace his hands on Matt’s desk. “Because whatever passive-aggressive shit you’re trying to pull I need you to stop. I mean, at first I thought, okay, Matt’s going old school with his apology—but this isn’t an apology is it Matt? This is—what? You tell me. Because if you’re not apologizing than you’re just being an ass and it’s not funny.” There’s hurt there, beneath the anger, makes Matt frown. Foggy keeps talking, agitation growing, “I mean, I thought we had an agreement, our very own brand of don’t ask don’t tell but if this is going keep being a thing—”  
Matt holds himself perfectly still, presses down the flinch that pulls up from his gut. “I didn’t send those, Foggy.” Matt’s never cared for flowers, there’s something funereal to them he’s never been able to shake. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

(“For the record,” Foggy whispers, lying supine on Matt’s floor, Matt’s new coffee table assembled and a bottle of whiskey well on its way to empty between them, “we never have to talk about it, those things I lied about that you know. I mean. I think, it’s better that we don’t. You know. Clean slate.” Matt makes a considering noise, the vibrations of it fill his throat and buzz inside his skull. He wants to tell Foggy—wants to tell him _everything_ , how Matt’s heart sometimes follows the same rhythm as Foggy’s, how he tracks him across rooms and listens for him in the morning and how when he thought he was going to die he was glad he wasn’t alone. But Matt was never supposed to know and Foggy isn’t asking. “Clean slate.” Matt echoes, reaching for the bottle.) 

Foggy stops short. Matt wishes he could make out the meaning of his heartbeat, tapping away in Matt’s ears. Foggy makes a frustrated noise. That’s easy enough to interpret. 

“How—” Matt swallows. He can do this. They can talk. They can be civil even if they can’t be friends. He smooths a hand over his tie and tries his luck. “How have you been?”

“Are you kidding me?” Foggy isn’t outright hostile, but there’s a cautious note in his voice now that’s rarely been directed at Matt before. Matt’s mouth twists. He knows what he did to earn it. He grounds himself in the feel of the desktop beneath his fingertips. “I think it’s called being polite, Fog.” 

Foggy’s body tenses further. “You mean you haven’t been keeping tabs on me? Not trailing me after hours?” The words drip with skepticism. 

Matt wills himself not to go red. “You know I’m not—Foggy, I—” There’s no way, he tells himself, no way Foggy knows about Matt’s pit stops in his neighborhood. Foggy’s always been sleeping. 

“Don’t Matt.” The anger in Foggy’s voice is muted, carefully banked behind the same resignation he spoke with the day Matt didn’t ask him to stay. “I’m not here for an apology.” His heart beat stays the course. “I just came to tell you to knock it off.” 

Matt’s eyebrows rise. “Knock what off?”

Foggy exhales hard, pushes off Matt’s desk with a creak of particleboard. “You know what. Popping up everywhere like a freakin’ daisy. The flowers...” Matt opens his mouth in protest again and Foggy cuts him off with another sharp sound of disapproval. There’s the shift of clothing, Foggy’s arms crossing over his chest. “You don’t get to cut me out of your life and then shove yourself into mine.”

Irritation cuts through the veil of guilt that hangs perpetually around him, pushes Matt upright in his chair. “I didn’t _cut_ you out,” the uptick of Foggy’s heart is mutinous but Matt speaks over it, “and I already told you I’m not your secret admirer.” The words cut across his tongue but Matt feels cornered and trapped under Foggy’s attention after weeks of wanting just a fragment of it. “Besides,” Matt adds on, walking a tightrope between annoyance and hopelessness, “I live here too. You can’t expect me to just never show my face in Hell’s Kitchen again.”

“I thought that’s what you were working towards.” Foggy’s voice cracks, “Isn’t that why you hung the rest of us out to dry? So you and your girlfriend can treat this city like your playground without having to answer to anyone.”

The words land like a kick to Matt’s stomach, knock the air out of his lungs. He feels like he’s gagging on the thick perfumed smell of the roses. (She _hated_ roses.) Matt shakes his head numbly. “She’s not, Foggy. Elektra’s not...” He manages, his voice sounds miles away inside his own ears. He wanted to tell Foggy this too, sitting on his bathroom floor, Stick somewhere out in the city making arrangements, grief frozen inside his chest as he gasped into his own bloodied hands, praying for her eternal rest and trying to remember how to breath through the overwhelming devastation of being left behind. Again. 

“She leave again?” Foggy asks, but his voice wavers. Foggy’s smart. He’s always known how this story was going to end. 

Foggy spares him. “Brett said there was blood—on the roof of that building Karen and the other hostages were in. But it wasn’t—it didn’t belong to any of the bodies—I thought maybe it was yours but—fuck, I can’t believe—” He sucks in a deep breath, holds it in for a long second. “Fuck, I’m sorry Matt.”

Foggy never liked her. Not when they were in college. Not now. But there’s no lie in his voice when he says he’s sorry she’s dead. 

_She saved my life,_ Matt thinks, blinking rapidly behind his glasses. He can’t stop thinking it. He hasn’t spoken about her since Stick left the city. He wonders if saying the words will lessen the weight he feels pressing down on his chest. “Nobu—”

“ _Nobu_ —” The dazed surprise in Foggy’s voice sets off warning bells in Matt’s mind, makes him bite down on the words building up on his tongue. “Wait, the guy who flayed you open last year? I thought Fisk had finished him off.”

Matt shakes his head again, tries to clear the fog that obscures everything around him but it sticks like a film, heavy as a burial shroud. “Apparently, he didn’t do as good a job as I thought.”

Foggy swallows. His blood rushes in his limbs, his heart reaches a worrying pace. “What the fuck did you get yourself into Matt?” Foggy asks, honestly incredulous and more than a little afraid. Matt rubs at the bridge of his nose where the metal of his glasses leaves an impression. He prefers Foggy’s anger to this, his worry. The soft give of his concern has always been so hard to resist. 

Matt might not have cut Foggy out of his life but he didn’t make it easy for Foggy to feel a part of it. That isn’t going to change. Matt doesn’t know how.

“It’s okay Foggy.” Matt does his best to smile, but it feels jagged on his face. “You don’t have to worry about me anymore.”

Foggy’s breathing cycles through a few deliberate inhales and frayed exhales, one hand pushes through what remains of his hair. He manages to collect himself in time to say, “Fuck you Matt.” There isn’t a single tremor in his words. 

Foggy turns on his heel and walks out the door. He doesn’t slam it behind him when he goes and Matt sort of hates him for it. 

-

Matt throws away the roses in the dumpster in the alley beside the building. The smell of them follows him home regardless.

-

“Matthew.” Father Lantom greets him with his usual gruff warmth, “I haven’t seen you in a while. Though I read about your escapades frequently enough.” 

Matt’s face goes hot at the gentle reproach as Father Lantom slides into the pew besides him. “Have you come for confession, coffee, or a conversation?” 

Matt clears his throat. “All three. If you have time that is.”

Father Lantom’s hand pats at his knee (Matt restrains himself to keep from wincing. Last night featured a crow bar he hadn’t been able to avoid as well as he would have liked). “Always. Follow me, Sister Marge just picked up a fresh bag of Italian roast.” 

Father Lantom makes as a strong a cup of coffee as Matt remembers. They drink in relative silence for a while. The quiet is comforting inside the stillness and familiarity of the church, the smell of candlewax and incense embedded in every surface. It’s the closest thing Matt knew to a home for so long that even now it’s enough to put something inside him at ease. 

“What’s on your mind Matt?”

“You told me once that guilt was a call to action, to make amends, but do you think, could guilt be a reminder? Of a…a failing. Something that can’t be made right but shouldn’t be forgotten?” 

“It might.” Father Lantom says carefully. “Is that how you feel?”

_Yes_. “There are times when I want, I _wish_ —“ Somedays Matt feels like all of him is made of up of _want_ , “I’ve hurt people Father—people I care about. My choices have had consequences. The people closest to me have been hurt. And I can’t—can’t ask them to forgive me because I can’t change, I can’t stop—” Something hot shivers in his chest. He squeezes his fingers into a fist, tries to rein it in.

“Matthew. These people you care about, do you regret hurting them?” Matt nods. If there had been a way to spare them pain—but there hadn’t been, nothing short of erasing himself from their lives.

Father Lantom heaves a heavy sigh. “Now I can venture a guess as to what it is you can’t change about yourself, but should I be so bold as to assume…”

Matt swallows. There’s someone two rooms away, humming absentmindedly to themselves. “Foggy, my partner—my friend—he wanted me to stop. He thought—he thinks--I’m going to get myself killed.”

“A valid concern for a friend and partner to have, don’t you think?”

Matt shrugs. Foggy’s concern has never been what bothered him. But Matt had always hoped that it would dull into something manageable. He wanted Foggy to see how Matt was capable of taking care of himself as well as the city. Matt had waited for the day that Foggy’s worry eased into something less heavy for them to carry between them. But then Frank Castle had happened and Elektra had returned and everything went to hell and Foggy’s concern had been muddled by his anger, his disapproval, his unwillingness to listen when Matt tried explaining what was happening. So Matt stopped trying.

“I—I was—selfish. I thought I could do it all and have everything but I _can’t_. I just made everyone unhappy. ” Karen and Claire and Foggy. He’d made Foggy so unhappy. He’d let it grow into something bitter and brittle between them because he hadn’t known how to make it better. Matt sighs. “I just want to do what’s best for everyone.” 

Father Lantom clicks his tongue. “And what’s that?” 

“I let them go.” Stick had been right in the end. It is the only way. “So they can have their own lives.”

Father Lantom hums low in his throat. “That can’t have been an easy choice to make.” That hadn’t mattered once it became clear there was no other choice.

Matt shrugs, “It was the right thing to do.”

“So this is what you mean to do from now on? Carry on with your mission completely alone?”

“I did before—before anyone knew. I can do this alone.”

“I don’t doubt it. You’re a man of great conviction. Still, that’s a great deal of responsibility for one man to take on himself. “

Matt doesn’t say anything in response.

“ _‘It is not good for man to be alone.’_ ”

“I don’t think the Scripture is referring to this—”

“Probably not but I think we can agree it’s the sentiment that matters. Human beings, Matt, we crave community. That’s why we live together. We make families, seek friends, we rely on each other. We help one another. It’s part of our purpose.” 

Matt nods, “Exactly. I want to keep helping, Father. But I can’t put any one else at risk. This is the best way—”

“How? How can that be true if it means being alone?”

Matt’s nails dig into his palm. “Maybe I’m meant to be alone. I’ve tried Father, you know I have. I’ve tried doing this with people and they just get hurt. They leave. They _die_. I—I can’t have that happen again.”

Father Lantom sits back heavily. “You’ve been dealt a difficult hand Matt, but to decide that God means for you to be alone? To live alone and fight alone for the things you believe in? To die alone? You can’t. It defies the very idea of a community of faith.” 

Matt bites his lip, teeth snagging on a strip of dry skin. He pulls on it, tastes copper on the tip of his tongue. “This isn’t about faith. It’s about keeping them alive and doing what needs to be done to keep the city safe.” 

“If that’s true,” Father Lantom grants without granting anything at all—the man should have been a lawyer, “if by some unfortunate chance that was your road, whatever made you think you had the right to decide what was best for the people who care about you? For the people you claim to care about too?”

“I’m trying to protect them!” Matt’s voice bursts out of him, and he ducks his head almost immediately, apologetic and embarrassed by his own outburst. He thinks about Elektra, her heart going quiet as her body went heavy and still in his arms. If a woman as brilliant and capable and lethal as her could be killed because of Matt, how is he ever supposed to protect anyone else?

“From yourself?”

“I’m not—I’m not good.” He stumbles over the word, hears all too clearly the echo of Elektra’s voice, thinned with pain up on that rooftop. “I can’t—I can’t be who they want me to be.”

_“Go be a hero.”_ Foggy said the night they stopped Fisk. Matt went with Foggy’s blessing at his back and he’s never forgotten how good it was to have it, the thrill of approval. Foggy had been there when he’d come back, sitting outside Matt’s apartment, heart nervous and his relief nearly palatable in the air when Matt had opened the door for him. His arms had wrapped like steel bands around Matt when he’d pulled him into a crushing hug. “You did it Matty.” Foggy had said while Matt was still shaking with the impossibility of their victory, sweaty and grimy and blood-stained. And Matt had believed, in that moment, that they were going to be okay. 

But they never were. Even after he and Foggy had called their metaphorical ceasefire, Fisk locked away and the streets of Hell’s Kitchen marginally safer for it, they’d kept fighting. More than they ever had before, Foggy radiating worry, hesitating where he never had before—before offering his arm or telling Matt about whatever was happening around them on the street, when reaching for him, like he was afraid of what Matt would read in the touch. Foggy questioned their friendship when all Matt wanted was for him to understand what it meant to him to have someone who knew him as he really was. He had thought, optimistically, stupidly, that Foggy, who had seen him beaten and bloody, who had sought him out after hearing the truth from Matt’s bruised mouth and left only to come back when no one else before him ever had, would stay. 

Instead, they fought on the mornings when Foggy let himself into Matt’s apartment and found him hurt, when Foggy sighed hard with disapproval and begged Matt to be careful. (“I am careful.” “Buddy we need to get you a new dictionary because your current understanding of careful obviously needs work.”) They disagreed about telling Karen, about bills and clients and the mornings Matt came in to the office late and stiff-limbed and exhausted. 

Their disagreements might have been short-lived at first but they were so desperately argued that they each carried the impressions of them for days and weeks after. Matt and Foggy fought in tiny, explosive flare ups and bouts of passive-aggressive silence that made the air in the office hang heavy and sullen. It had always been a matter of time before it fell apart again. 

Matt just never thought the truth would be so hard to swallow.

“What I do. Why I do it, it doesn’t excuse the fact that I hurt people. And I have to stop pretending that it does. I hurt people. I hurt myself. I hurt the people I care about most. This, it’s the best I can do for them.”

“I thought you of all people Matthew would know that the world cannot be easily divided into good and evil.” Father Lantom taps his nail against the wooden tabletop. “Have you spoke to your friends? Your partner? Have you asked them how they feel about this situation?” 

Matt nods. He thinks. He shakes his head. “I—we’re not really on speaking terms right now.” Not that there was anything left to talk about. “I think that pretty much says it all.”

Father Lantom’s hand closes around his wrist, his grip strong. “I know you’re a man of action Matthew, but sometimes words are the best recourse we have at our disposal. Actions have their strengths, but they can be impulsive. We act first and don’t stop to take stalk of our decisions until after the fact and then feel like there was nothing else we could have done. But words? They force people to stop, to think, to consider multiple possibilities. You ought to know, Matt,” He can hear the smile in Father Lantom’s voice when he says, “you are a lawyer.” 

-

He waits until the end of the workday, loiters in a cramped coffee shop across the street until the foot traffic picks up with people eager to get home after a long day at the office. He drinks three more cups of coffee than is good for him and tries to convince himself this is the best option.

He thought a firm with as much money as HC&B could afford better security but it’s easy to make his way upstairs, as simple as asking and pressing the right number on the elevator panel. 

The firm’s lobby is spacious, padded leather furniture and tall windows. It’s warmer than the atmosphere Lanman and Zack maintained but with the same recognizable marks of wealth threaded throughout the room. 

“How can I help you, sir?” The receptionist at the front desk greets him. Her voice is perfectly polite, borders on warm. Matt smiles, makes sure every inch of it is above reproach, leans forward without touching her desk (glass, he doesn’t want to leave behind smudges). “Yes I was—”

A passerby stops mid-stride. He recognizes the smell of her perfume from a few interactions last year, when she and Foggy rediscovered each other in the wake of Wilson Fisk. She approaches with the signature sound of her heels eating their way across the smooth tile flooring. The blade-sharp point of her voice follows, “Murdock, long time no see,” without the slightest suggestion of irony or remorse. Marci Stahl. (In another life, Matt thinks they could have gotten along. Maybe.) “What brings you to our humble halls.” 

Matt grins, nothing about HC&B sounds humble. Marci clips closer, an opponent wrapped in Chanel No. 5 and cashmere, “Or should I be asking who? Pretty sure you didn’t drop by to see me.” He doesn’t know what Marci sees in his face, but it makes her laugh. 

“Right. Tessa, can you please call Mr. Nelson and let him know he has a visitor.” Marci says nonchalantly, sliding her hands into supple leather gloves. She always did have good taste. “If it was up to me I’d tell you to go straight to hell Murdock.” She says casually, “But we both know he’s not nearly as brutal.” Her hand wraps around Matt’s upper arm, her thumb digs into a bruise she can’t possibly know about. Matt wonders if Foggy wasn’t on to something all those times he claimed Marci had some kind of magical power to pinpoint people’s weak spots. Behind the desk the receptionist shifts, thrown by this turn of events. 

Marci leans in, her cheek warm where it briefly brushes against his, “Try not to fuck this up, Matt,” she says into his ear, presses a kiss to his face. He can feel the impression her lipstick leaves behind. “Nice seeing you again, Marci. We should catch up sometime”, Matt says drily, earns another sharp laugh and a quick squeeze to his arm before she leaves. Matt listens to Marci go with his heart kicking against his ribs.

“Uh…Mr. Murdock?” The receptionist, Tessa, calls him back to attention. “Mr. Nelson will see you.” 

-

Matt hesitates at the door, listens to Tessa’s retreating steps, the click of distant fingers tapping over keyboards, the occasional one-sided conversation of a phone call. Behind his desk, Foggy takes long, even breaths, diaphragm extending and slowly contracting as he exhales. His stomach rumbles. Matt wonders when was the last time Foggy ate. 

“Should I ask?” Foggy asks after their silence has officially strayed into awkward territory. 

“Wasn’t sure you’d answer if I called.” Matt replies, honesty uncomfortable in his mouth. 

Foggy sighs. “Well, I probably wouldn’t have.” His chair creaks as he spins towards Matt. “You gonna sit?” Matt takes that as an invitation to come closer, runs his fingers over the back of one of the chairs set in front of Foggy’s desk. The material is soft, as expensive as everything else in this place has been. It’s a long way from folding plastic chairs. “Nice place you’ve got here.” Matt says with a careful grin, folding himself into one of the seats. 

“Yeah it isn’t too shabby.” Foggy agrees, knocking his knuckles against his desktop. His desk is solid wood. 

“Bagels in the breakroom?” Matt ventures, but Foggy doesn’t bite, leans forward in his chair to rest his forearms on his desk. “What are you doing here Matt?” 

Matt presses his lips together, keeps his hands clasped in his lap, fingers laced tight. He’s tempted to tell Foggy he doesn’t know what brought him here, his heart hammering almost as hard as Foggy’s across from him. But he didn’t come here to lie to either of them. “I’m tired of fighting.” He says simply, because he has nothing else to lose (the line between bravery and foolishness has always been a thin one. Matt can barely tell the difference between the two. Foggy would probably say that’s part of the problem). 

Foggy’s snort is full of derision. “You sure had me fooled.”

Matt sighs, feels something in him wilt, disheartened. Foggy isn’t vicious by nature but maybe Matt’s forced him to be, took his kindness for granted too many times to expect it now. “I’m tired of fighting with you.” 

That makes Foggy stop short. The human heart is physically incapable of skipping but Matt can’t think of any other way to describe what Foggy’s heart sounds like right now. “What are you going to do about it?” Foggy asks, careful, paces them back in the same uncomfortable silence from before. Matt squeezes his fingers together. 

“I’m not here to ask you to come back. I know Nelson and Murdock is over with. And I really am glad you’re here. You’re a great lawyer Foggy. You’ll do good work here, I know it. But…” Nervousness ties around his throat like a noose, “are we really going to spend the rest of our lives not speaking to each other? We both know the neighborhood isn’t that big and neither of us is going anywhere soon.” Matt licks his lips. This had been so much easier in his head. “What I’m asking is, do you think, is there any way we could at least talk?”

Matt’s hands itching to move, to pick at his tie or an imaginary loose thread, anything to keep them occupied while he waits for Foggy’s response. Foggy’s fingers tap out a secret message on his desk top, quick tiny flicks of his nails on the smooth surface that trail off into silence. “You want to be friends?” He asks finally, disbelief fraying the edges of the words.

Matt nods, a sharp jerk of his chin in Foggy’s direction. Foggy swallows, something catches in his throat and Matt waits, impatience gnawing at his bones. 

“Just like that huh?” Foggy asks, sounds faintly bemused. “You get visited by three ghosts in the night or something?” 

Matt’s mouth twitches into a small smile. “Not quite.” 

Foggy clears his throat. “What—what am I supposed to say here?” 

Matt shifts in his chair, back straight and shoulders set. He can’t tell if this is going his way or not but he doesn’t have a good feeling. “I—the truth. I think.” It’s the wrong thing to say apparently. 

“The truth? _Seriously?_ ” Foggy’s frustration reaches a rolling boil, bubbles over the surface of his words, “That matters all of the sudden? You—you stood in front of me and promised you’d be _careful_ , that you trust me with the truth to tell me before you did something crazy and half-baked and then you turned around and you _lied_. You—no fuck that, lying would require you actually talk to me, but you didn’t even do that. You just disappeared Matt. You pushed for the Castle case even though you knew how I felt about it and then you _bailed_. You stopped showing up and you didn’t answer calls and you didn’t even—” Foggy bites the words off, swallows noisily. 

“I wanted to—” Matt starts, because he had, he had, he just hadn’t known how, couldn’t figure out the time and place and way to tell Foggy without making everything worse. 

“No, you didn’t.” Foggy cuts him off. “Or at least, you didn’t want to tell me as much as you wanted to do things your way.” Foggy trails off, draws a deep breath and says, “And what sucks most about all this Matt is that I could have—I could have gotten over the whole horns and mask thing, I mean, I could have learned to live with the other guy.” Foggy’s heart flicks quick, quick, quick, but then it hasn’t slowed since Matt came into the room. It’s impossible to pick a lie out no matter how hard Matt listens. “But you, _you_ Matt, I couldn’t just stand there and watch you throw away everything you’d worked for—that we—Your career and—Karen and—your whole life, your _real_ life Matt, you just—it was so easy for you to leave it all behind. Like we didn’t even matter.”

Matt’s face is hot and he has to press his lips together to keep his mouth from trembling. _You mattered_ , he thinks, _you still matter_ , but the words stick in his throat. 

“And now you’re here and you want to be friends—until what? The next time you decide you’re better off alone and—I can’t do that. I can’t—fuck—” Salt in the air and Matt’s eyes sting, eyelashes damp against his skin when he blinks. Foggy sniffs. 

“I miss you,” Foggy says thickly, “But I’m kind of used to it by now, so I think…” He shakes his head; his hair brushes his ears. Matt still can’t get over the absence of it. (“Comfort me Matty, for like Samson my locks have been shorn and I am rendered powerless.” Foggy takes Matt’s hands by the wrists and brings them up, lets him touch the ends of his hair where it falls well over his shoulders now, soft and slippery over his fingertips. Matt twirls a single piece of hair around his finger, wraps it over his first knuckle like a ring. “Am I still pretty?” Foggy jokes, heat in his face when he says it. His heart skips like a flat stone over still water. “The prettiest, bud.” Matt answers, and lets the strand of hair unravel slowly.)

“I think you should go now, okay Matt? Just. Go.”

”Just like that?” Matt asks, the words scrape against the roof of his mouth.

Foggy nods. “I don’t have anything left. Do you?”

Matt wants to argue. Wants to convince Foggy that it can be different. Matt can hide all the parts of himself that Foggy hates just like before. Living a lie is better than being alone. Matt knows from experience. 

Matt shakes his head.

Foggy’s heartbeat follows him back down the hall, quick and fretful, and as lonely as Matt’s own. 

-

_“You had one job Murdock.”_ The screen reader recites the next morning with an artificial air of neutrality. 

Matt doesn’t waste time wondering how Marci got his number, he just rolls over and goes back to sleep. 

-

He tries not to dwell on it. (He’s never been much good at letting things go.) 

The week carries on. It turns into another. February draws to an end. March isn’t much better. Matt continues his patrols. Matt starts fights and Matt finishes fights with the brutal efficiency the Devil’s become known for. He looks for the Hand and he visits Elektra, Ben, Elena, his father. Sometimes he even leaves flowers on their graves. He doesn’t feel any better for it. He rescues Karen again and gets maced in the face for his troubles. The only silver lining he can think of is that she sounds genuinely apologetic when she realizes what’s happened. He thinks it might be progress but dismisses the thought as quickly as it comes.

He loses track of time, one day bleeding into the next, one night no different than the one that came before. This is his life now. He doesn’t feel strongly about it any which way. He has work to do.

-

The pattern holds until it doesn’t.

It holds until the night he comes home, chilled to the bone and tired, a string of late nights finally catching up with him. Or maybe it's the last year, and the one before that and all the sleepless nights that came before, when he would lie awake listening to a city torn apart by anguish. His limbs feel weighed down with an insurmountable exhaustion that makes everything blurry.

Matt fumbles at his helmet, yanks at the mask and tears the suit from his body with a half-wild desperation that still feels too slow, like he’s moving through water. Afterward he stands in his underwear, panting for breath, trying to ground himself in the jagged huffs of air he pushes out of his aching chest. 

The quiet of the apartment echoes back at him. Loneliness curls round and round his neck. He stumbles into his bedroom, falls into bed. Even pulling the blankets up over his head takes more energy than he has to spare. He can’t remember ever being this tired before.

Sleep swallows him almost immediately, pulls him under so quickly Matt doesn’t know that he’ll ever break free.

-

He dreams of Elektra, her hand against his face, wet and warm with blood, the bright scent of bergamot and hot iron on her skin.

(He loved her. Matt was stupid to think that would ever make a difference.)

-

He wakes up to his alarm bleating thinly in the other room. He needs to get up. He’s supposed to follow up with a potential client today. But he’s tired still, head pounding and still so heavy, he can barely lift it off the mattress. He can’t bring himself to move. Even the silk chafes over Matt’s skin, the fuzzy corners of the world sharper now, clarity cuts into his tired mind.

No one will miss him if he stays here.

The alarm goes silent. The numbing relief that floods him is so overwhelming Matt has to turn his face into the body warm sheets to hide from the shame. 

-

Matt awakes up to the echo of Karen’s name somewhere in his living room. He groans, curls into himself and wills the world quiet until the mechanical voice drops off. His relief is short lived, the phone going off again within seconds. _Karen. Karen. Karen._

He moves slowly out into the living room, floorboards cold underfoot, fishes his cellphone out of the pile of cast off clothes he left behind before he went out last night. Karen’s gone to voicemail and called again by the time he’s finally gotten a hold of it. Matt holds the phone in his hand, considers returning to bed for a few more hours if not the rest of the day, is still weighing his options when the phone starts vibrating in his palm. He cuts off the first syllable of her name when he answers.

“Karen?”

“Matt,” There’s a flurry of activity behind Karen, a distracting buzz in Matt’s ear. “Matt sorry, can you hear me? Uh--have you heard from Foggy?”

He registers the sound of her voice, the way she says his name, before his brain can make complete sense of what she’s asking him. “No—I mean, yes, I can hear you.” Foggy. She’s asking about Foggy. “No we haven’t talked—” He swallows. 

Karen curses under her breath.

“What is it? Is he—what’s wrong?”

When Karen speaks again her words are clipped. “Okay, um, if you do, can you just tell him to call me please.”

“Karen?”

“He’s—it’s probably nothing. It’s just. We were supposed to hang out last night but he didn’t show up and he’s not answering his phone and I thought, maybe you two—”

“We’re not.” Matt says as evenly as he can, rubbing at his face. Matt tries to scrub away the lingering cobwebs of sleep and exhaustion. “He’s not—have you checked with Marci or—how long has it been—has he been to work or—”

“Yeah, he went in yesterday, he was telling me about the Newman case the last time we talked—and Marci, she uh, she said he invited her out with us but then…” He didn’t show. “I’ve checked Metro General but he’s not there and his parents haven’t heard from him and Brett says it’s too early to file a missing person’s report and I wouldn’t have called but he’s been sort of out of it lately, like, he’s been spooked and he kept saying everything was fine but now—I didn’t know who else to call.” Her voice trails off, at a loss, sets Matt into motion. “Where are you?” He asks, grabbing at the items littering the floor (Kevlar sleeve, dress slacks). He forces his hands to remain steady, presses down on the fear hemorrhaging in his gut.

“City Hall. Press conference. They’re making a statement about what’s happening in Harlem. I couldn’t get out of it.” Karen answers and the din behind her grows fainter, like she’s stepped out the maelstrom. “I—I went to his place. He didn’t answer the door.”

“I’ll check again, maybe he spent the night somewhere else.” Matt says, prays with everything inside him this can all be chalked up to miscommunication, a mix up in dates or meeting times or location. He wants to go to Foggy’s door and have him answer, drowsy and confused by the sight of Matt at his threshold. 

“Matt—he’s—” Karen’s voice wavers, “Call me, okay? If you get a hold of him or...just it doesn’t matter. Call me so I don’t go crazy waiting over here.”

Matt swallows the growing knot of fear in his throat. “I will.” He means it.

-

Karen doesn’t answer when he calls her less than thirty minutes later standing in the middle of Foggy’s living room. He leaves her a message to let her know Foggy isn’t there. He hesitates, just for a second, before adding there isn’t any sign that Foggy’s been there at all this morning, the heater completely cold to the touch and the air stuffy from being shut in. He probably wasn’t here last night either.

He doesn’t linger afterward. It’s harder than it should be to leave behind all the markers of Foggy that permeate his space, but Foggy’s not there and sticking around won’t bring Matt any closer to finding him.

Brett doesn’t have anything to tell him that Matt doesn’t already know, not enough time has gone by for any official action to take place, though Brett at least promises to ask around the precinct, tell the other officers to keep an ear out in case they hear anything that could trace back to Foggy. “And here I always thought you were the one throwing trouble his way.” Brett says drily before Matt leaves, but there’s that familiar quickening of his pulse that Matt recognizes as worry. 

He calls Karen again and leaves another message when he finds himself standing outside the office. There’s no reason why Foggy would be here but there’s no reason for Foggy to be missing either, so Matt climbs the stairs quickly, fumbles with the locked door even though he can hear the emptiness of the rooms from the hallway. He almost turns away, almost heads back out to find Karen at City Hall. Almost.

The smell is faint at first but it intensifies as soon as Matt gets the door open. He shakes his head, but he isn’t imagining it, it gets worse the further he goes, cloying and sweet, it sticks in his throat like always. Roses.

He follows the scent of them into the empty room that used to be Foggy’s office. The door is open though Matt knows beyond a doubt he’s left it closed for the last three months. He scans the room, fear numbing his tongue and radiating like cold from the center of his chest. The thickly perfumed air of the room fills his lungs when he steps inside. Matt reaches out and almost recoils when his fingertips connect with wrinkled, satin petals. They’re cold to the touch. Something falls out of the bouquet, flutters softly to the desk and lands almost without a sound. 

His fingertips drag over the plastic, pinch at a thick square of paper. 

His eyebrows rise when he swipes over what is unmistakably braille, raised across the surface of the card.

_To chopping the head off the snake._

Time doesn’t slow down. The world doesn’t shrink to a single point. The memory of Foggy’s heart beating across a cramped dorm room echoes in his head for a split second but it’s quickly buried by an avalanche of dread, fear and worry twist together into something lumpy and misshapen under his skin. Matt’s been running himself ragged every night searching for signs of new threats he’s let himself forget to look for signs of the old ones. He let himself forget Wilson Fisk, bidding his time in cellblock D. 

Foggy. Foggy. Fisk promised to start with Foggy. 

His fingers spasm around the cardstock, crumple it against his palm. Foggy’s name repeats like a mantra inside his head, like Matt can summon him here, make him appear by some feat of magic and desperation. _Foggy._

Fisk once claimed he and Matt were alike, that they were both ruthless in their determination to save the city from itself. Maybe he was right. Anger surges forward, burns white-hot and wild inside him and he imagines the satisfying thud of Wilson Fisk’s skull slamming into a tabletop, his blood wet on Matt’s fists when the Devil gets his hands on him. There won’t be a cell in the world that can keep him safe, won’t be a guard that can stop Matt from ripping him to pieces if Foggy isn’t found breathing and whole. Matt will kill him, will show him the lengths he’s willing to go to in order to avenge anything done to Foggy _—God, Foggy where—_

“Matt!” Glass crunches under Karen’s shoes, her steps cautious on the approach. “Matt—what the hell happened?” Matt stops, takes a deep shuddering breath that expands his stomach. At his back the wall of Foggy’s office is hard and uncomfortable. His hand hurts. The notecard is still clenched in his fist, creased and damp with sweat.

“Christ,” Karen’s voice rises from the direction of the door. “What the hell?” Underfoot comes the crunch of glass and plastic, everything still smells of roses. “Matt.” She repeats his name, unafraid despite the mess and the blood Matt can feel dripping from his right hand. (The window pane. He punched the window pane after throwing the vase against the wall.). 

“Fisk.” Matt says, still trying to catch his breath. His knuckles throb, heat pierces the bone and swells up the tissue. He flexes his fingers and bites down a hiss of pain. “Fisk has Foggy.”

Karen’s pulse spikes. _“What?”_

“I—I went to see him—the day Reyes was shot,” (the day Foggy was shot—Foggy bleeding and alone and in pain— _What’s Fisk done? Where’s Foggy now, what—_ ) “I—shit—he said he would dismantle us, Nelson and Murdock, that he—” Matt swallows the nauseating lump pressing hard against the back of his throat. Karen’s heart is skittish, her body locked with tension. Matt’s anger ebbs enough to make room for his own fear (he did this, he deserves her anger, her disappointment, Foggy’s blood is on his hands, Matt did this to them, he—)

“Does Fisk know about the man in the mask?” Karen picks her words carefully, and it occurs to Matt that she thinks someone else might be listening in to their conversation. Matt tries to pick up any abnormal frequencies in the room but he can’t hear anything, can’t believe he hadn’t thought to check before.

Matt shakes his head deliberately, “He knows we put together the case against him. He might know we got help from outside.” His mouth is dry, his shirt sticks to his back with sweat. Has it always been so hot in here? “I threatened his girlfriend,” Matt says, guilt churning in his stomach, “Fisk—he threatened Foggy. I—”

“He said the job was getting to him.” Karen mumbles almost to herself, “He said, he was starting to imagine things.” She rubs a hand across her face. “I thought it was you. I thought you were being— _you_.” 

The flowers. Matt searches his memory for details he hadn’t known to pay attention to. Matt’s pride had been too bruised to realize Foggy wasn’t just making wild accusations. How many other signs have there been? How many warnings did Matt miss because he wasn’t there? Ten years at Foggy’s side and all of them thrown away so that when Foggy actually _needed _Matt there—__

“He’s going to kill him.” Karen says, voice gone cold. Matt’s hands shake, the foundations under his feet feel as though they’ve been knocked loose. Whatever freefall he thought he knew has apparently only ever been a precursor to this. “Matt, he’s going to kill him—” There’s an edge of hysteria there that Matt latches onto, tries to pull himself together around the ingrained instinct to make things better. She comes closer, bridges the distance between them. Her hand closes around his wrist, her fingers are cold and thin but her grip is still strong, keeps him in place. “What are we going to do?” 

Matt flexes his injured hand again, breathes through the pain. “I have to find him.” There’s no other alternative, no other possibility Matt can entertain. Matt has to find Foggy and once that’s done he’ll make Fisk pay for thinking he could touch Foggy and escape the Devil’s wrath.

“How? You can’t just run around the city looking for him. You need a plan. You need help.” 

“Karen there isn’t time—”

“Listen to me, just this once okay? This city is massive and he could be anywhere. You cannot afford to waste time looking everywhere. We have to figure out where Fisk might have taken him, narrow down your search so that you actually have a chance of finding him before—” Her heart stutters and Matt’s fingers furl into a fist against his will. “He’s my friend too.” Karen says fiercely, and whatever fight Matt wants to start dies on his lips. Of the two of them, Karen’s the not one Foggy kicked out his life.

“I did this—it’s my fault.” Matt says, anger building inside him with nowhere else to go but at himself. “Karen—I should have—”

Karen doesn’t say anything but her fingers tighten, exert near-bruising force on his arm, her blunt nails dig into his skin. 

-

They look. They pull up file after file, copies of documents they were never supposed to keep when they officially handed the case off to the DA’s office last year. (“You made these.” Matt says, still fighting through the numbness of his earlier outburst. Karen shrugs, unapologetic, “I didn’t really trust anyone else to actually do their job at that point. Can you blame me?” Matt really can’t.) 

It’s slow work with all of Matt’s braille copies shredded but at least he doesn’t have to pretend, can trail his fingers over the pages Karen places in front of him, touch the print and try to make something of what he can pick up. Still, it’s slow work. They drink weak coffee made from the tin left over in the kitchenette, look and look but Matt doesn’t feel like they’re getting anywhere. 

Karen’s phone vibrates on the tabletop, she taps out quick responses and goes on with the work. “I have someone looking into some things.” She says shortly. Later Matt will ask her about the press conference, about what happened in Harlem, but right now his focus is narrowed to Fisk, to Foggy, to wasting time until he can let the Devil out into the city. To whatever he might find. 

“The feds took the majority of his property when Fisk was arrested. But there are at least half a dozen locations in Hell’s Kitchen alone that they couldn’t prove were connected to any of Fisk’s criminal activities. Those are still under the control of whatever puppet Fisk has set up out here, but it doesn’t look like there’s been anything done with most of them. One was sold last August, another in October, but the rest of them are pretty much sitting untouched.” Karen pushes a file across the tabletop, her heart beats hard behind her ribs. “I think we should start here.”

It feels impossible to hope that Foggy will be there, that Fisk’s would be so careless as to remain in Hell’s Kitchen when he knows what he knows. If he even entertained the possibility that they would get Daredevil involved Fisk would have looked for ground outside the city, but that won’t keep Matt from taking to the rooftops of New York as soon as he feels the light retreating from the room.

Karen walks home with him, files tucked under one arm. He can think of a dozen faster ways to get back to his apartment from the office but he can’t just leave Karen now, can’t cut her out again. She was right when she said that Foggy’s her friend too. Someday, if they survive this, she might even be Matt’s. 

“He won’t stop at Foggy.” Karen says after they’re inside, “He’ll come for you too.”

And her. Fisk’s has had her name since the Union Allied. “No. He’s not going to have the chance.” Matt isn’t going to give him the chance to hurt anyone else. 

He can feel the weight of Karen’s attention as he picks pieces of the suit off the floor where he left it scattered the last time he took it off. He sheds his clothes without modesty or hesitation, takes what feels like his first full breath once he has the suit on. He digs one of the old burner phones out of the closet for her, tells her to call him if anything happens.

“Don’t worry about me Matt.” She says, handing him the mask. “Do whatever you have to.”

Matt slips it on. His hands have never been steadier.

-

Foggy isn’t at the first location. He isn’t at the second. There’s nothing, no suggestion that Foggy’s ever been in either place. There’s not even a trail to follow after. Fear burns through Matt like a fever, makes him feel trapped with every second that goes by without a solid lead.

The third building is just as empty, as hopeless. Matt’s fear carries him across the city, wrestles with the hope Matt refuses to acknowledge (Matt needs to find him. Matt can’t lose him. _You already did_ says a vicious voice at the back of his head but Matt can’t afford to listen to it now. Matt has to find Foggy and bring him home even if that doesn’t mean Matt anymore).

Matt runs and Matt prays to God—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—and to every saint and angel he was ever taught to pray to, with every shred of hope and every scrap of faith inside him. _Let me find him. Let me find him. Please._ He bargains and promises and pleas. He runs. 

Foggy isn’t in the last building. 

Matt screams, startles rats and squatters and pedestrians out on the street. Matt screams and drops to his knees, beats his knuckles against the sides of the helmet and tries to _think_. He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know—

-

The last of the guys goes down with a hard, crunching thud (broken collarbone to keep the dislocated shoulder blade company), his shout of pain echoes off the cement. Matt digs his knee into the small of the man’s back, keeps him pinned, leans forward to get close enough to the guy’s ear to ask him what he knows (he’s left a trail of broken bones and bruises behind him in the last three hours and he means to blaze a path right to Wilson Fisk’s cell door if he has to. If he doesn’t find Foggy, if he’s not alive then—Matt really won’t have anything left to lose). 

A buzz cuts through the air, vibrates like a string pulled tight and plucked. 

“Think that’s yours asshole.” The man beneath him gasps, struggling against Matt’s hold. Matt pulls back, shifts more of his weight onto the knee pressing down against his spine. The guy yelps. 

The burner phone. Karen. Matt yanks the guy’s head back by his hair and slams it down into the concrete. There’s a sickening satisfaction when he goes limp. He’ll be out for a while but Matt can come back, can find another one of Fisk’s scattered rats to question if he has to. He rises to his feet, reaches for the phone but it’s already gone still. It vibrates once more, a quick short pulse in his gloved hand. A message. 

_“Matt,_ ” Karen’s voice is clipped on the other end of the line, _“Matt they found him. They—they’re taking him to Metro General right now and—”_ Her voice breaks, muffled for a single breath, _“Sorry,_ ” she breathes, _“I’m headed there now and—I’ll meet you there.”_

Matt freezes. All the urgency from before goes cold, solidifies into a leadened weight in the pit of his stomach. His limbs turn to stone. 

Foggy. 

Movement returns to his limbs all at once, carries him out of the room, away, up onto the roof, over to the next building, the next, further and further away. He stops once he feels like he can breath again. 

He listens to Karen’s message again. It doesn’t change. Karen’s voice still breaks with joyful disbelief. _“They found him.”_ He listens to it again just to be sure. There’s a ragged, hopeless sound in his ears and it takes him a minute to place it, to trace it back to himself and the tight knotted feeling that rises in his chest. 

-

He makes it to the hospital before he realizes there’s no way Daredevil can show up at Foggy’s bedside. He reluctantly turns away to return to his apartment, breathes in the last lingering traces of Karen’s perfume in the air as he throws on the first clothes he can get his hands on. Matt races back towards the hospital, throws all caution to the wind by cutting through alleys and over fences, down the sides of buildings where tenants are already starting to wake. He doesn’t care what the residents of Hell’s Kitchen might see. He just needs to get to the hospital. 

He’s hot, sweat going cold on his skin as he slows to a stop just around the corner from the hospital entrance, unfolds his cane and walks quickly into the turbulent storm of sounds and scents and people contained inside. His heart doesn’t slow even after he manages to get his breathing under control. A harried nurse who probably has a dozen better things to do guides Matt to the elevators, rides with him up to the fifth floor where Foggy’s room is located. She takes him all the way to Foggy’s door and Matt thanks her, nods at her with an all-consuming gratitude that has nothing to do with walking him here.

Minutes pass. Matt stands in the hallway and listens to the monitors just beyond the closed door, the rhythmic in and out Foggy’s breathing unhindered alongside them. Matt remembers their first night as roommates, being kept awake thru the night by the forceful meter of Foggy’s snores, the odd snuffle, the unexpected shift of his heavy limbs on the too narrow mattress. Matt thinks its the closest he’s ever been to hating him. It had become so familiar to him, a backdrop to hundreds of nights that first year that had only become more familiar with every subsequent year of their friendship (part of the whole that is Foggy in Matt’s mind, like his heartbeat and the rise and fall of his voice and the steadiness of his arm under Matt’s palm, his scent and his laughter and his kindness and everything, _everything_ , a world contained inside a single human body, almost as known to Matt as his own).

Even now, Matt can recognize the sound and it settles the unnerved, skittish thing that’s been tearing at Matt’s insides since the conversation in Foggy’s office. Matt counts inhales and heartbeats, an answered prayer just a few feet away, gets so lost in the sound that he jumps when Karen calls his name. “You’re here.” She says, voice tired from a long night of waiting, “I called his parents and uh—you missed Brett, but he’ll be back in the morning—couple of hours I guess, once Foggy’s better able to give a statement. I didn’t really get to talk to him—the doctors gave him something for the pain and to help him rest but—I think—he’s going to be okay.” Karen shrugs, a rustle of day old clothes. She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself as much as she is Matt. 

_Matt pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, so roughly the metal digs into his skin. “What happened? How—”  
_

The task of telling Matt what happened after he left seems to ease some of Karen’s discomfort. She tells him about Jessica Jones. “She works for Hogarth, Foggy’d mentioned her before. She has abilities too, not like—um—different ones but she works as a PI. After you left I reached out to her. Apparently Hogarth already had her on the trail when Foggy didn’t show up for work and she—she’s the one who found him.” 

“Is she here?” Matt asks, tightening his grip around the handle of his cane. 

Karen shakes her head. “She was in the ambulance but I don’t think she stuck around long after I showed up.” 

Jessica Jones. Matt files the name away for later, taps his cane against the floor. “You’re still listed as one of his emergency contacts, y’know.” Karen says and Matt’s eyebrows shoot up so quickly he thinks he pulls a muscle in his face. “Do you wanna—” she gestures over Matt’s shoulder towards the closed door.

_Yes_ , Matt thinks, more than anything _yes_. All he can do is nod.

-

Foggy’s parents arrive, harried and still shaking off the shock of being woken so early in the morning by such unpleasant news. Anna Nelson surprises Matt by pulling him into a hug when he greets her, and the guilt that wrenches his insides is a physical pain. He wraps his arms around her and allows himself to give into the embrace. He doesn’t know what Foggy told her to explain why the firm had closed its doors, why Matt didn’t appear in their home for Christmas. (She still sent him a gift. A courier had dropped if off at his apartment the first week of January. Matt hasn’t had the nerve to wear the sweater yet, keeps it neatly folded in a drawer. His fingers brush against it sometimes, linger over the soft material. It feels as though it would be warm.) 

Karen excuses herself to make a call and a doctor comes by to tell them how Foggy’s doing. Bruised ribs and a concussion, most likely the result of the head wound. Abrasions from being restrained, a split lip. Three dislocated fingers in his left hand. Matt commits it all to memory, every single hurt they inflicted on Foggy, everything he’ll make Fisk pay for.

Foggy sleeps on unawares; his heart keeps time, a metronome ticking at the forefront of every other sound in the room. Matt commits that to memory too.

-

Foggy wakes up, a small window of consciousness, his voice low and his words soft and slumped together with sleep and painkillers. “You’re here.” He says, and it's the surprise in his voice more than anything else that tells Matt he’s being spoken to, singled out of all the other people in the room. “Hey Fog.” Matt says, overly aware all the attention bearing down on him. He tries to grin but his face is beyond his control, his brow pinches together, his mouth shivers. He feels ruined. Want rises up from somewhere behind his navel, pulls Matt forward in his seat until his hand is slipping through the railing at the side of the bed. He fumbles for a hold on Foggy’s forearm. His skin is chilled under Matt’s palm and it feels as though something inside him breaks.

“Hey.” Foggy mumbles, but he’s already slipping away, falling back into unconsciousness.

-

Brett comes back in the early morning, and Matt doesn’t mean to listen while Foggy gives his statement. “Liar.” Karen hisses, but she doesn’t tell him to stop, stands next to him in the hallway and bites her thumb between her teeth like she’s trying to listen too.

Foggy describes being grabbed off the street, a blow to the head, a van. He talks about a dark room somewhere in the city, gives details about the four guys who held him. He hisses when he moves too quickly, upsets a monitor and Matt, almost makes him start towards the door. “They say anything, anything at all that could help us figure out why they took you?” Brett asks patiently, the way he talks to victims and shocked bystanders and hysterical witnesses, but never to Foggy. It doesn’t sound right. 

“They said they were going to kill me.” Foggy says, calmly, evenly. Nothing about this makes sense. Matt’s head hurts. “Felt like they were waiting for something. I don’t know what.” Foggy breathes out, exhale laced with pain. “Honestly before Jess showed up I was sure I was done for.”

“ _Jones_?” Brett asks, voice resigned. 

“She—” Foggy swallows, “she saved my life.” He gives a tired chuckle. “Not sure if that means I have to pay her company rates.” 

“If anyone can talk her into a discount I’m sure it’s you.” Brett says, not unkindly, “Listen, I’m not trying to scare you but you need to be careful. Those guys we picked up? They’re not talking and something tells me they’re not going to. I know the type. Usually people working for someone who can afford to send more and isn’t afraid to cut their losses. Whatever you got yourself into Foggy I don’t think it’s done yet so just—” Brett clears his throat. “Be careful okay? If you can’t get ahold of any of your usual bodyguards let me know, there’s a couple of folks down at the station who apparently like you enough to keep an eye on you.” 

“Aw Brett, I knew you cared.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Brett grouses without any bite. It's still a few more minutes of fruitless questioning before he leaves, one more insistent urge for Foggy to take care before he reaches the door. Matt taps Karen’s arm before Brett’s even closed the door behind him. Matt wonders if they look guilty standing there, if his face offers even a fragment of how he feels.

“Hi Brett.” Karen says tiredly, closely followed by, “Detective Mahoney is shaking his head, Matt. And we haven’t even done anything yet.” Her voice is oddly light given the tension coiling tight throughout her body. “I think he’s preemptively disappointed. ”

“Try not to stir up too much shit, Page.” Brett says like a man who already knows he’s going to be ignored. Normally, Matt would sympathize. “Something tells me we’re gonna be seeing a lot more of each other again before this is done.” 

-

Visiting hours end. Anna and Edward go home, fretful and still confused about what is going on. Karen takes a call and ends her conversation with a hard sigh. “I officially have to go and make nice with my editor, I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Her coat rustles as she shrugs it on, her voice firm as though she already knows Matt’s not going anywhere. (They’re not really strangers, Matt realizes, something small and hopeful flickering to life in his chest. For all the things they don’t know about each other, the things they do know are too important to disregard.)

Matt leaves Foggy sleeping in his hospital bed, surrounded by machines and tries not to feel like he’s abandoning Foggy all over again. He finds himself a seat in the tiny chapel two floors down from Foggy’s room. It’s a narrow windowless room with light moveable chairs that give under Matt’s weight, it smells more of bleach than incense. He tries to mediate, but his thoughts refuse to settle, a jumble of exhaustion and relief and anger (at Fisk and at himself, at the last six months and his whole life, the mess of it that gets all over anyone Matt’s wants to keep close). 

He listens to Foggy’s heartbeat, his breathing, the monitors, the comings and goings of the nurses coming in to check on him. It’s after midnight when something disrupts the pattern. “Are you there?” Foggy asks abruptly, still awake since the last nurse left. “Can you hear me or am I officially talking to myself?” Foggy exhales hard. “If you are, I just—the coast is clearish. Just so. You know. There’s that. Okay? Okay. I’m gonna stop talking now because this is pretty weird right? I mean…”

Foggy doesn’t stop talking, his voice keeps going, rises and falls as Matt makes his way upstairs, pulls Matt in like a tide coaxing a drifting boat ashore. Foggy talks about hospital sheets and the bland soup he got for lunch and how sick he is of hospitals. “Is this why you never want to come?” Foggy asks with uneasy humor, a catch in his breathing that makes the knot at the center of Matt’s stomach tighten. Foggy stops when Matt raps his knuckles against the door, barely a brush before he pushes the door open.

“How you doing?” Matt whispers, feeling awkward where he stands. They don’t have much time, maybe an hour, before the next nurse comes to check Foggy’s vitals, but right now those sixty minutes stretch ahead of them like a chasm with only murky darkness down below. “I kinda expected you to come through the window.” Foggy whispers back, sounding just as uncomfortable as Matt feels.

“I can if you’d like.” Matt offers a small grin, he wonders if Foggy can make it out at all. 

“No, this is refreshingly normal.” Foggy’s voice rumbles in his throat, “It’s good.”

Matt creeps closer in tiny increments, finds the chair Mrs. Nelson left vacant and lowers himself slowly, waiting all the while for Foggy to change his mind, to question Matt’s presence, to turn him away. But Foggy stays quiet, his voice tucked away now that Matt’s in the room. 

Matt licks his lips, tucks his hands inside his pockets. Hospitals are always too cold. It never seems to matter what the weather is doing outside, the vents never cease to pump frigid air into every room. “I’m sorry.” Matt says because he doesn’t know what else to say, the last 48 hours still surreal. 

“We talking about a universal-type of contrition or you gonna narrow that down for me?” Foggy asks, less than a foot away and Matt’s palms itch with the urge to reach out again, to touch whatever part of Foggy he can and reassure himself that he’s really there. It’s been less than a day still since he did just that but already it feels impossible, Foggy faraway and out of bounds again. 

“It was Fisk.” Matt says, digs his knuckles down into a bruise just over his hip. Foggy’s breathing stalls, a monitor beeps fretfully. 

“What?” 

“He—I spoke to him after Reyes was shot. He told me he was going to make us pay for putting him away.” 

“You spoke to Fisk?” Foggy’s voice is tired, pulled thin, “What am I saying. Of course you did.” He sighs, “Okay I’m going to put a pin in that one –but you better believe I’m coming back to it—he wants to kill us?”

Matt nods, “Apparently we made his shit list.”

“Lucky us.”

“I told him that it wasn’t—that you weren’t involved, I told him it was all my fault—” 

It takes Matt a second to identify the terrible sound Foggy makes as laughter. “You’ve always had a shit poker face Matty.” There’s no trace of softness in Foggy’s voice, nothing gentle to the nickname for Matt to take comfort in. Matt’s shoulders ache from the tension keeping him in still as Foggy swallows hard, his body cycling through an instinctual urge to run. 

“Okay.” He empties his lungs in a long, drawn out exhale. “Okay so basically he’s gonna keep trying until we’re in swimming with the fishes?” Foggy’s heart thunders in his chest, the air is heavy with sweat and tears. “And now I just fucked that up for him so he’s gonna be like double pissed. Sure he’ll channel that into real motivation for the next go around.”

“No,” Matt shakes his head, “He’s not going to get another chance.”

Foggy chuckles mirthlessly. “C’mon Matt, it’s not like Daredevil’s gonna be there every second of the day.” Daredevil wasn’t even there today. “Foggy Nelson doesn’t top a whole city’s worth of people in need of saving.” 

Matt’s throat closes around the snarl that wants to tear itself free. He clenches his hands tighter, digs his nails into his palms, but he forces his voice calm. “He’s not going to get another chance because I’m going to stop him before he can try.”

“He’s already in jail Matt how are you—” Foggy stops. The gradual ascent of his heartrate accelerates as he works his way towards the right conclusion. “ _Jesus Christ_. Tell me it’s the concussion talking and that you’re not actually saying what I think you’re saying.” Matt doesn’t say anything at all, spares a fragment of his attention for the sounds of an approaching nurse but unfortunately hears nothing that might save him from having this conversation with Foggy right now. Foggy’s impatience escapes in a low, unhappy growl. “Did we jump a way back machine and arrive at last year?” Foggy hisses, “Matt. We’ve been over this, you _cannot_ kill this man.”

“Locking him up obviously isn’t helping matters. He’s traded in one crime empire for another Foggy. I practically handed him the keys to his kingdom.” In his arrogance, Matt provoked Fisk’s wrath and brought it down on Foggy, on Karen, on Ben and Elena, on Claire and too many other people Matt should have kept safe. 

“Then we tell the cops. We tell the feds. Get him moved. Up state or out of state or into solitary confinement. I don’t know. We just--we handle it. The right way. The legal way. What we aren’t going to do is have you break into a maximum security prison and kill an unarmed man.” Matt’s mouth twitches with the memory of Fisk’s fist crashing into his jaw. The man’s hardly defenseless.

“They’ll want evidence.” He says flatly, “The guards won’t turn on him, he’s bought their loyalty already. It’s my word against his. And like you said, my word’s not worth much these days.”

Foggy chokes on the onslaught of words that follow. “Bullshit. You’re still a goddamn lawyer and the most bullheaded asshole I’ve ever met. You can make people listen to you, Murdock. Use whatever brains are left between those ears and find someone who’ll listen. You don’t always have to run head first into the worst possible decision.” Foggy’s voice is bleeding desperation, his heart holds steady in its agitation. He tries to sit up and hisses between his teeth, makes a sharp pained noise that pulls Matt to his feet. He hovers uselessly at his bedside, unsure of what help he can offer. Foggy eases back into the thin mattress.

Helplessness crashes over Matt’s head, that sticky-fingered desperation pulls at his insides, smudges the hard edges of his resolve. All at once, he seems to feel every ounce of his own exhaustion. “He was going to kill you.” His voice sounds small in the wake of Foggy’s words. Not enough. 

Foggy’s breathing stutters in his chest, the reality of the situation already marrow deep in both their bones. “Yeah, I know Matt. But I’m not dead am I?” Foggy’s arm moves, his unbandaged knuckles knock against Matt’s wrist. Matt wants to grab hold of it before they fall away. He doesn’t. “Showed him didn’t I?” Foggy’s laughter wobbles in the quiet, makes Matt’s eyes burn. 

Foggy doesn’t say anything when Matt rubs at his eyes, lets Matt retake his seat silently. Matt opens his mouth a few times, tries to find words to convince Foggy of why he has to do it, how Castle was right when he told Matt putting someone away wasn’t enough to keep anyone safe and how sorry Matt is that it’s Foggy paying for Matt’s mistakes. He wants to apologize for not being quicker, smarter, not being there to save him and being so grateful that Foggy’s safe now that he hasn’t already. But the words just build and build, bottleneck inside his throat so that nothing comes out. Foggy doesn’t say anything either, breathing with careful deliberation in his hospital bed. They let the silence stand. Matt loses track of time, jumps in his seat when he hears the next nurse starts her rounds. He clears his throat, pushes himself to his feet slowly, the minor relief he feels at evading the end of their conversation overshadowed by his reluctance to leave. “Get some rest.” Matt says gently before he slips out of the room. 

“You too, buddy.” Foggy whispers after he’s closed the door. 

-

Foggy gets discharged the next afternoon. Mr. and Mrs. Nelson worry about him, ask him if he’d like to come back with them, for a few days at least, but Foggy declines their offer with understandably thin good-humor. “Thanks but I really just want to sleep in my own bed. I’ve got a date at the precinct and a follow up with Jess, I think it’s best if I just stay put for now. But I’ll come by this weekend and you can mother hen me all you’d like then.” 

“I’ll hold you to that.” Anna says, pulling Foggy into a hug while Matt and Karen linger quietly on the wings of their conversation. “And I expect to see you both for dinner. No excuses.” Karen makes a soft surprised sound when Mrs. Nelson pulls her in, and Matt barely has a chance to prepare himself before he’s being engulfed by her thin arms. Matt wraps his own arms around her, careful, ducks so she can press a small, dry kiss to his cheek. (He thinks of being twenty-two and welcomed at their dinner table, invited into their family gatherings and offered housing in the summer between schoolyears. He thinks of how Foggy has always offered him everything and all he ever asked of Matt was honesty, feels the consequences of his choices like a scythe slicing perpendicular lines over the linked chambers of his heart.) 

Foggy doesn’t say anything when Matt and Karen shuffle into a cab after him and the three of them fill the backseat with stilted small talk until they arrive at Foggy’s place. Upstairs Matt opens the door (Foggy’s keys are missing, along with his wallet, and he jokingly begroans having to go to the DMV for a replacement ID as though that were the worse part of all this). They carry their uncomfortable silence inside, close the door behind them and lock it inside the apartment with them. The apartment feels smaller than usual. 

Matt does a quick check of the apartment but there’s nothing out of place, nothing indicating anyone has been here since Matt left.

“Right.” Foggy clears his throat. “Uh. I have. Water? I think. If I can tempt you.” 

Karen gives a nervous laugh. Matt tries to grin. It’s worse somehow than those last days of Nelson and Murdock when they were all of them unraveling at the seams. Then they at least were still trying to pretend things were better. Now it’s like all of them have forgotten their roles. Improvisation doesn’t suit any of them it seems. 

Karen orders take out that goes mostly uneaten, the three of them squeezed shoulder to hip on Foggy’s lumpy sofa, Foggy’s sandwiched between them. 

They stay for forty-three uncomfortable minutes until Foggy starts yawning every few words. Karen promises to come back tomorrow after work. There’s a tension to their farewells, none of them sure of what will come next and each of them overly aware of it. The truth is too big to hide from now. “I’m glad you’re okay.” Karen whispers into Foggy’s ear before she goes, and Foggy’s uninjured hand grips at the back of her coat. “Me too.” He stage-whispers into her hair, kisses her briefly before she pulls away. Matt hangs back, unsure of what he should do. Foggy catches him off guard, crushes him close despite his ribs. “Don’t do anything stupid.” Foggy says fiercely, mouth close to Matt’s ear, the approximation of a kiss when it brushes against Matt’s cheek as he pulls away. “See you later Fog.” He says in response, and Foggy doesn’t correct him, doesn’t tell him to keep away. It feels like a weight off Matt’s back, a sigh of relieve shivering through his body.

The feeling doesn’t last long. In the elevator Karen and Matt stand shoulder to shoulder, the silence so heavy that Matt thinks his spine will buckle under it. He listens to the gears at work overhead, the groaning metal shuttling them downstairs. He thinks of the last three days and the last few months and the last year, Karen’s confidence and her determination and her need for justice at any cost. He thinks of Karen’s hand soft on his face and the steel in her voice as she argues for what’s right. The good and the difficult, the strong and the frightening, all the parts of her that Matt is just beginning to see for himself. Only now beginning to understand for what it is.

“I should have told you sooner. About all of this.” Matt says quickly, before he can talk himself out of it, the breadth of his debt to her undeniable. “You didn’t deserve that. I shouldn’t have kept you in the dark.”

Heat pools in Karen’s face, blazes bright across Matt’s senses. “No, I didn’t.”

“Karen, I—”

Karen shakes her head. “I’m not going to say it’s okay now. Or that we’re good. We’re not—it isn’t going to be okay.” Air rattles in her throat. “But there are things I have to tell you too.” Her heart flicks quick behind her ribs. She swallows. “Just not right now. Okay?”

Matt nods. It’s more than he expected. “Okay.”

“What are we going to do about Fisk?” Karen asks. The elevator slows to a halt. 

Matt bites at his bottom lip. He wonders if she would agree with him if he told her about what he plans to do. He realizes he honestly doesn’t know the answer or what it would mean to him. “I don’t know yet.” 

The doors slide open. “We’ll work on it.” Karen says confidentially, takes a step forward, holds the elevator doors open for him to follow after her.

“See you around, Matt.” She says once they’ve reached the building door. They step out onto the sidewalk together, and then go their separate ways. 

-

Foggy’s sleeping by the time Daredevil returns to his usual rooftop. It isn’t surprising. What does catch Matt by surprise is that the roof isn’t unoccupied when he gets there. 

“Wow.” Her unfazed heart matches the totally unimpressed cadence of her voice, “I always sort of thought the papers were exaggerating when they talked about the horns.” She doesn’t move away when he comes closer. 

“Ms. Jones I presume?” Matt says, trying to get a better sense of her: there’s the faint scent of whiskey on her clothes, stale, at least a day old, mixed with sweat and car exhaust, drier sheets, grape jelly, and blood. 

“Yeah, sorry, not all of us go around in fetish gear making asses of ourselves in the paper.” Matt huffs a short laugh under his breath, marvels at Foggy’s ability to make friends. (“Trouble magnet.” Foggy sighs heavily, holding a bag of frozen vegetables to Matt’s swollen knuckles, “Born under a bad sign, the both of us.” And Matt laughs, tips his head forward, adrenaline still rushing sweet through his limbs. Foggy’s hand is warm under his, holding Matt’s injured hand up while he ices it. “Not so bad from here.” Matt chuckles and Foggy’s breath huffs warm against the top of his head, close. “Yeah, that would be all those blows to the head talking.”) 

Matt grins, the expression sharp on his face. It pulls on the cut on his upper lip, revives the sting of it, but it doesn’t reopen. “We’re also not all lucky enough to have private patronage keeping our names out the paper.” 

Jones snorts. “You saying you bankrolled that get up yourself.”

Matt might not know her but he certainly knows of her. He remembers how closely Karen had followed the story last year and what little Foggy had been able to get from Brett after the story had more or less disappeared from the papers. The mystery woman crusading though Hell’s Kitchen, a muddle of eyewitness accounts about events that couldn’t be real. None of that matters now. What he knows now is that she saved Foggy, found him and brought him back alive. She could push Matt off the roof right now and he will still owe her that. 

“Don’t you have drug dealers to punch or a pimp to hog-tie?” Jones asks, bored, still seated. 

“I’m where I have to be.” Matt answers, lowering himself onto the ledge next to her. Jones shrugs, a silent dismissal. 

“Guess Nelson really does specialize in freaks.” Jones says after a while, “You should be careful or Hogarth might just try to get you on company payroll if she finds out how close you two really are.”

Matt listens to Foggy’s breathing, his resting heart. Safe, safe, safe. “Thank you.” Matt answers, and Jones’ unflinching heartbeat rises, even if it’s only for a moment. “For saving him. I—thank you.”

Jones huffs under her breath, impatient, “Don’t mention it. Literally. I don’t—he’s a good guy alright. Talks too much but—he’s not a totally asshole. Which in his line of work is downright miraculous.” 

Matt nods, “Yeah.”

“Christ. Whatever.” Jess shifts uncomfortably. “Stop talking now.” She says tersely, kicking her heels against the brick face of the building. Bits of brick chip away at the impact. 

Jessica heaves herself off the building ledge, gets her feet back under her. She lingers at his back for a few seconds, her hesitation breaks with a short muttered ‘fuck it’. “Whatever reasons you thought were good enough to leave him behind, chances are they probably weren’t. “ She shrugs. “You should do something about that. Not that it’s any of my business, but y’know, I hear it makes things better in the long run. Or some shit.” She disappears with an effortless leap over to the next building before Matt can do anything more than gape at the vacant spot she leaves behind.

-

Foggy’s kitchen window still sticks when he lifts it, his voice rough with sleep when he says, “You’ve got ‘til the count of three to get in here. Shit, it’s cold.” Foggy doesn’t actually count, but Matt still makes it down in record time, tumbling through the open window with less grace than he would have typically preferred. (Foggy has seen him: drunk, sick, hungover, sleep-deprived, frustrated, elated, stupid, exhausted, bloody, scared. Foggy has seen Matt fall off a barstool and win big hustling pool, he’s seen him injured and stubborn and desperate. Foggy’s seen him dfall; Matt thinks he can stand to see him stumble too.) 

“Unless you’ve upgraded that thing to include a thermal lining or slipped into some long Johns, you’ve got to be freezing.” Foggy says, shuffling towards the stove. Matt stands motionless for a second, listens to him as he lights a burner, gets water shimmering. Heat prickles in Matt’s face, dozens and dozens of needles digging into his skin as he thaws, cold bleeding out of his body painfully slow. “Thanks.” He says, accepting the mug of hot coffee Foggy hands him with stiff fingers. 

“You have a minute or do you have to parkour out into the night soon?” Foggy asks with forced levity, cradling his own cup close. Matt picks up on the shift of his clothing, threadbare sweats and thick socks, feels the awkwardness mount between them as he becomes aware of everyplace the suit confines him, blocks him from Foggy. He sets his mug down to pry the mask off, pushes the cowl off his head. His ears are hot, his hair is sweaty. He shivers, still cold. “I wasn’t really planning on being anywhere else tonight.” He confesses, embarrassed by his own honesty. His heart beats as loudly as Foggy’s does three feet away. 

“Okay.” Foggy says, something indecipherable in his tone. He takes a step closer, shrugs. “I think—I mean, you left some stuff here from last time—you can, you’d probably be more comfortable if you changed. If you wanna?” Nervousness bubbles beneath the casualness of the offer. 

Matt undresses in Foggy’s narrow bathroom, clumsy with cold and apprehension. He manages to bang his knee into the sink when he yanks off his left boot. The clothes Foggy handed him smell from sitting undisturbed for too many months but Matt slips them on anyway. 

His throat is dry, his fingers throb, alternate between hot and cold, nervousness wiggles in his stomach like the phantom eels Josie keeps in smooth-faced liquor bottles. He cups his palms over his sightless eyes, tells himself to breath. Breathe. He reminds himself to press down on the fledgling hope that tries take flight in his chest. 

Foggy knocks softly at the door, “You fall in?” and Matt breathes in deep one more time, runs a hand through his hair. He leaves the bathroom with the suit knotted into a ball in his hands, “Sorry.” He says, still uneasy. Foggy waves off the apology, starts back towards his living room where Matt drops the suit by the side of the couch. The television’s on, some cooking competition turned on low, both their cups relocated to Foggy’s plywood coffee table. Matt waits for Foggy to sit first and settles himself at the opposite end, mindful of the space between them.

Foggy drums his fingers against the side of his mug. “You want to kill him?” he asks without so much as a shift in his breathing. Matt blinks, caught off guard by this unexpected turn in what he’d hoped would be a quiet evening in. There’s a flash of anger at Foggy for luring him into a false sense of security, for stripping Matt of his defenses, at himself for wanting Foggy’s forgiveness so much he didn’t realize what was happening. He scowls, wishes he at least had his glasses if he can’t have the mask.

“Yes.” There’s no point in lying anymore. They’re passed that point. 

Foggy doesn’t sigh. He doesn’t huff. He keeps breathing, slow, measured, unintelligible to Matt’s ears. He takes a sip of coffee. “You gonna try to do it?”

Matt taps his foot, jostles his knee. Beneath his bare feet Foggy’s rug feels terrible. Matt’s heart beats low in his belly, tendrils of cold dread wind down his arms, lash around his wrists and numb his fingers. “I have to.” 

“You don’t.” Foggy says, voice soft but steady, as though he can read Matt’s mind. Or maybe just his face and whatever it is he sees there among the bruises that have come to life on his skin. 

Matt opens his mouth but Foggy doesn’t give him a chance to argue, sucks in a deep breath and talks right over him. “You know you can’t. You _can’t_. Not for me, Matt. Because if you did, if you killed him for me then what’s the point? Everything we did and everything we ever said we believed in, that we worked for—that _I_ worked for—everything I want my life to stand for, it’ll be over. And I can’t live with that. And I know you can either. If I know you at all, I know that much. You’re not Frank Castle, Matt. No matter how badly you might wish you could be some days, maybe even right now. You weren’t built for it.” Foggy’s voice cracks but his heart is as steadfast as the confidence he professes. It isn’t faith, not as far as Foggy’s concerned. It’s a certainty. “You really gonna prove me wrong here Matt?”

Matt ducks his head, wishes it were as easy as believing Foggy knows him best. He wants to believe Foggy can see the parts of Matt he can’t even recognize in himself. That Foggy finds him worth believing in. That’s what he’d thought, time and again. With Stick and Claire, Karen, Elektra. Matt wants, with every fiber of his being, for someone to see him, know him, for someone to tell him who he is and what he is meant to do, to clear the chaotic mess of the world inside his head and set him on the right path. To ease the burden of uncertainty. It hurts to accept that dream as fantasy even now.

“He wants to kill you.” The words still ricochet inside him, tear his insides apart with anger and dread. “He won’t stop just because he failed this time.” They have that in common, Matt and Fisk, they’re not men who can be easily deterred. “What do you want me to do, Foggy? Just step aside and let him do it?” _Again?_ Matt doesn’t add, but he feels it regardless, heavy on his tongue. “I can’t.” He balls his hands into fists. 

”Hey, it’s my life, I think I should have a say in whether or not you commit murder on my behalf.” There’s the familiar anger in Foggy’s voice, makes Matt feel more like they’re on level ground.

”You said it yourself Fog, he’s not going to stop. He isn’t going to just give up because he didn’t succeed this time. He’s going to keep trying. He’s going to come after you and Karen and sooner or later he’s going to succeed if I don’t stop him.”

Foggy snarls around an impatient sound. “ _Why?_ Why does it have to be you?

Matt’s face contorts, incredulous and furious. “Because it does.” He snaps, too angry to think of a better argument, “This is who I am.”

“No.” Foggy says, shaking his head vigorously, “I’m not taking that anymore.” Foggy’s voice hardens, determined and sure. 

“It’s a part of you, I know.” Foggy concedes, but he doesn’t sound defeated. Not this time. “But that’s just it Matt. It’s only a _part_ of who you are. And I think, we both need to understand that. That rage you talk about—the devil your grandma was talking about—that isn’t all you are. If it was we wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now because you would have killed Fisk last year. You would have—you would be worse than the Punisher.” 

Matt’s face twitches. Foggy’s fingers tighten around his mug. “Asking you to stop was a dick move on my part probably—but you know, you have to know how freakin’ scary it was—that morning I found you on the roof with a bullet buried in your helmet. I thought you were dead Matty—I—” Foggy swallows, heart hammering against the backs of his ribs. “I’m not trying to guilt trip you right now man. I know it probably sounds like I am but I’m really not—it’s just, the point I’m trying to make is that this is a part of you Matt but it isn’t all of you. But no matter how much some part of you wants to do this, the rest of you knows it’s not the right call.”

“I won’t let him kill you.” Matt says, voice ragged, pushes up off the couch as though sitting is what makes all of this unbearable. He covers his face. He wishes he could make Foggy understand. Wishes he could disappear, _wishes_ — “I can’t—I’m tired of burying people Foggy.”

Foggy sets his mug down quietly, rises off the couch. “You know when they took me I really did think I was a goner. I mean, right up until Jess busted through the wall—the _wall_ Matty, she literally rammed through it like the Kool-Aid guy—I was sure I was gonna—”Foggy runs a hand through his hair. “Anyway, I’m there and I’m hurt and scared shitless and angry. The only thing they ever asked me was who you were but obviously I wasn’t about to tell them. I mean, I wouldn’t, no matter how angry I am at you Matt I would never—but I was, y’know, I was so angry at you. I was angry that we weren’t talking and that you let me walk out and that you picked her over me, again, and that I still gave a damn and that I was going to die giving a damn and that you were probably going to find out I was dead and blame yourself and how much I didn’t want that.” Foggy runs out of breath. “I thought I was gonna die and I was pissed at you Matt and I didn’t want to die and I didn’t want to be angry at you anymore.” Foggy’s heart beats and beats and Matt hurts, pulverized by the rush of feeling inside him that proves too much to withstand. “And then instead of dying I woke up and you were actually _there_ , you were—“ Matt chews his bottom lip, reopens the split in his lip. “I would really like to move on to the part where I’m not angry with you anymore, you have no idea. I want to—I’m tired of fighting too, y’know. But you’re still telling me you’re going to kill Wilson Fisk so he won’t kill me.” Foggy’s breath shudders, he takes nine short steps and bridges the distance between them. Warmth radiates off his skin, skims over the surface of Matt’s but none of it seems to stick. “I can’t say I’ve never asked anything of you Matt. I’d be lying. I know I’ve asked you for things we both know you can’t do, I really do—but this isn’t one of them. You want to save me so badly, and then go ahead and save me from _this_. Save me from whatever the fuck happens after you go through with this and realize there’s no coming back.” Foggy’s injured hand lands on his forearm, the splints around his fingers are body-warm and stiff, Foggy’s pulse flicks and flutters. His uninjured fingers curl over Matt’s wrist, gently lower his hand from his face, one, then the other. “Save yourself this time Matty. Please.” (Matt has vague memories of Foggy decimating classmates in mock trials, the murmur of surprise that always seemed to follow a debate when Foggy, easygoing, jovial, sunny Foggy tore about an opponent’s argument systematically and ruthlessly. Foggy is a born lawyer, Matt would do well to remember that more often.) 

“That you’re closing argument, counselor?” Matt mumbles after a too-long minute, trying to ignore the heat of Foggy’s fingers pressing into his wrist. 

“Don’t make fun of me.” Foggy chides, squeezing briefly. Matt expects his hand to fall away but it stays where it is. “I meant what I said, y’know. I don’t _need_ Daredevil. I need my friend. I need you, Matt Murdock.” Foggy’s voice goes thin, threadbare, nothing Matt could ever make fun of even if he wanted to. “I get the city needs you in the mask. I hate it, I’m probably always going to hate it, but that doesn’t make it any less true. The things you can do—but it isn’t about your abilities Matt, or, it isn’t just about them. It’s about the choices you make. I guess it always has been.” Foggy’s fingers tighten, one by one, his middle finger presses down hard over the bone at the base of Matt’s thumb. It hurts and steadies him all at once. “You wanna stop Fisk. Fine. We will. No one has to die.”

They’ve been down this road before. Matt can’t see how it’ll end any better than before. Foggy’s thumb moves in an arch over Matt’s wrist bone and Matt know what happens next. He caves. Lets Fisk go unpunished. He lets Foggy win. They try to start all over again. Matt will mess up. Foggy will be disappointed. One of them will end up dead and Matt can only hope it’ll be him. “What’s that saying about insanity?” Matt asks, trying to grin, but his mouth falls before it can plant roots. “Something about doing the same thing over and over again?”

Foggy shrugs, a singular jerk of his shoulder, “Good thing we’re not the poster boys for sane and wise decisions right?”

Matt’s head hurts. He tips his head forward and Foggy mirrors the movement, brings their foreheads together gently. “I’m gonna mess this up.” He whispers, an apology in its own right.

“Probably. You’re no saint Murdock.” Foggy snorts under his breath, “But neither of I. Least we can do is fuck up together.” 

Matt laughs, it wobbles in his throat, watery and weak.

This isn’t right. He hasn’t done anything to deserve another chance. He didn’t save Foggy. He can’t even kill the man who hurt him. Worry twists low in his stomach, that tomorrow or the day after that, next week or next month, Foggy will remember the reasons he shouldn’t trust Matt, will take it back and leave Matt empty-handed and alone.

He should know better. He does.

He’s greedy. Stick would call him childish and weak, but this time Matt won’t try to deny it. Matt needs Foggy. He needs him to remind him that there’s more to him than just the mask, to connect him to the life he made for himself, needs him to safeguard all the pieces of himself, even the ones Matt wishes he could cut out. 

“I missed you.” Matt says, closes his eyes as though that’ll make him less vulnerable, as though his heart weren’t a bleeding thing pulsing in his mouth, its every beat resonating in the words. “I’m sorry for—”

Foggy nods, forehead knocking against Matt’s, the palm of his injured hand coming up and cupping the back of his neck to keep them close. “Yeah, me too buddy.”

-

Foggy’s bed is smaller than Matt’s, forces them to lie close. Not that Matt would lie any farther even with more space available. He’d tried to put the suit back on, his night’s watch still waiting for him out on the roof but Foggy asked him to stay and Matt is tired of saying no. Tomorrow they’ll discuss what to do about Wilson Fisk but for tonight Matt allows himself to curl beneath Foggy’s sheets (a blend of cotton and polyester that haven’t been washed recently. They smell like sweat and sleep and Foggy, stir a memory of home in Matt’s mind that makes the knot in his throat tighten). The pillow collapses under Matt’s head and his eyes close appreciatively. 

“When was the last time you slept?” Foggy whispers—Matt wonders who there is to keep quiet for here. It’s just them—he wiggles under the blankets at Matt’s side, movements small and careful and un-Foggy-like. Matt frowns and declines to answer. 

Foggy’s fingers drag through the hair over Matt’s ear, scratch lightly at his scalp. _Don’t leave me,_ Matt thinks, his tongue thick and heavy inside his mouth, _don’t leave._

“Okay, but the same goes for you.” Foggy whispers back, pulling the blankets up over them both, cocooning them in scratchy fabric and gentle warmth. “I can’t bury you either.” 

Matt thinks he nods, or at least he tries to, reaches out and places his palm on Foggy’s side, lets his hand ride the rise and fall of his every breath, soaks in the warmth of Foggy’s body. Foggy stiffens under the touch for a moment before he eases again. _Does it hurt?_ Matt wants to ask, sleep already tightening its hold on him, slowly pulling him away. _Is this always going to hurt?_

_Yes_ comes the answer—from memory or Foggy’s lips or Matt’s own gut—but it doesn’t scare him. Not tonight. 

-

“Tell me what happened. With her. The whole story.” Foggy says softly, thirteen days after Matt wakes up huddled against Foggy’s back. Matt pauses where he is, reaching for his beer on Foggy’s coffee table. Foggy worries his fingers over the stitches curving over the surface of the baseball. The suit is hanging around Matt’s waist, the sleeves flopping stupidly at his sides as he sits back. 

Matt purses his lips, wonders what exactly Foggy got up to while they were apart that he’s so much better at springing things on Matt when he least expects them. “If you want to I mean. I’d—I want to know.” This seems to be Foggy’s preferred method, extending these invitations for Matt to tell him things he’s sure Foggy would rather not know. They’re a work in progress, figuring out the steps towards something new. Matt pauses, considers his options, returns the gesture with an offering of his own. It’s easier than he thought it would be.

Matt finds his voice curled tight into a knot at the base of his throat, unravels it slowly, picks it apart until the words can form. The thread of it is still wrinkled, bent in the places it’s been twisted together the longest, and try as he might he can’t work it smooth. Foggy doesn’t seem to care, listens quietly but not silently, lets Matt stop and stutter and stumble over his own voice. 

“You loved her.” Foggy says when Matt’s run out of words to say, and it isn’t a question at all, and that fact alone fills Matt with an unguarded gratitude that chokes him into further silence. He sucks in a messy breath, trips over words he doesn’t know how to say. He had once and maybe he could have loved her like that again, one day, if there had been time. But there wasn’t. There never will be. Acknowledging it is like stretching against stitches that aren’t quite ready to come out. Painful but not fatal. Losing her isn’t the cut-throat devastation it had been when he was twenty-two even if the finality is so much more definite. He hadn’t been lying when he told her he’d moved on.

The world is bigger now. Or maybe Matt is.

Silence stretches out between them after Matt’s run out of things to say. There’s a part of him that wants to run, that itches to climb out the window and ascend to the city’s rooftops, drown himself in the chaotic noises and scents and textures of the Kitchen. But running hasn’t gotten him or Foggy anywhere before. 

“I need you too.” He says, because they need to get better at this, at telling each other the things that scare them most. “As my partner. And my friend. My—you’re my family, Foggy. I need you. I love you.” (“I love ya buddy,” Foggy cheers, pulling Matt close by the front of his graduation robe, locking him into a hug. Matt laughs, knocks the cap off Foggy’s head in his rush to throw his own arms around him, listens to it plummet to the ground. The words catch on his teeth, crack with laughter, but they count, they do, he knows they do, can feel the reality of them in the warmth that rises in his face, his throat, his spine. It feels like the best day of his life.) 

“You’re my family too.” Foggy says, and there’s no lie to the words but there’s nervousness in his movements, in the flex of his wrist as he turns the baseball over. 

Foggy’s body temperature rises a fragment more when Matt leans in, the couch cushions shifting beneath them as he moves. He catches the corner of Foggy’s mouth—chapped, dry skin rough against Matt’s lips, mouth still sweet with the aftertaste of instant hot chocolate—feels the exhale of Foggy’s surprised yelp even as he better centers himself. It’s barely a kiss, close lipped and quick, mindful of the scab still healing on Foggy’s bottom lip, the excess heat trapped beneath it.

“Oh.” Foggy says when Matt pulls away (not far, still close enough he can feel the blush rising in Foggy’s face to match his own). “So like—when you said family you didn’t mean brothers then.”

Matt laughs, nervous. He jumps when Foggy gives up the baseball in favor of squeezing Matt’s knee. The kiss he gives Matt in return is short, gentle and soft. “Your bad timing is epic, Matthew.” He says after, thumb rubbing a smooth arc over the curve of Matt’s knee. “I don’t even have to tell you that, right? How bad an idea it would be to throw kissing and romance into the mix.” Matt tears his attention away from the trajectory of Foggy’s thumb, the memory of his mouth.

“What’s one more bad idea?” Matt jokes, grins fleetingly, and Foggy’s hand squeezes tight. 

“Nice try Casanova.” Foggy scoffs, not unkindly, kisses Matt’s temple. “How about we figure out how to deal with the criminal overlord after our necks first. Maybe later I’ll let you talk me into dinner and drinks.”

Matt smiles, reaching for his beer again. It isn’t a yes. But it’s a start.

-

April showers soak Matt’s shoes and turn the paper he’s holding over his head to pulp as he approaches the courthouse steps. He does his best to push through the wading crowds, jostles through a sea of umbrellas held aloft, damp shoulders and sharply crooked elbows, tightens his grip around his cane and readies to use it as weapon rather than a guide should the need arise. It just might. The trek from the office building has already felt twice as long already, his perception thrown askew by the muddled feedback he picks up all around him, these last steps an Everest-like hurdle as Matt fights a current of bodies and the ongoing storm. 

Rain water drips down Matt’s hand and into his sleeve, trickles down the back of his neck and plasters his hair to his forehead, whips cold against his face whenever the wind picks up. He thinks enviously of Karen waiting for them at the restaurant already. Offering to meet Foggy at the courthouse seemed like the chivalrous thing to do but now Matt just feels cold and wet. 

The courthouse steps are slippery underfoot—dress shoes never have offered much traction—but Matt makes it to the first landing without incident. He’s about to ascend the second flight when Foggy meets him, extends the wide lip of his umbrella over Matt’s head. The rain pelts menacingly overhead but at least it isn’t hitting Matt anymore. 

“Howdy stranger.” Foggy says, plucking the paper from Matt’s hand. 

“I think it’s raining.” Matt jokes and Foggy tosses his ruined paper to the ground where it lands with a plop. People divide around them on the steps, like a river breaks around a stone, but Foggy doesn’t seem interested in moving just yet, facing Matt head on. “Did you win?” Matt asks, the toes of his shoes nudging Foggy’s as he inches closer, as close as he can. He can only partially blame it on the rain. 

“Marci tore them a new one.” Foggy says proudly, attention still fixed on Matt. He pushes the wet hair off Matt’s forehead with a chuckle. “Now there’s a look.” 

Matt sticks out his tongue. 

“Ready?” Foggy asks, offers Matt his arm (his new coat is a nice one, the material is soft and already starting to warm with the heat off Foggy’s body under Matt’s hand). 

Matt squeezes Foggy’s arm, gives himself over the grin that stretches across his face. The wind blows around them, lashes them with rain, but in that moment Matt can’t remember what it is to feel cold. 

“Let’s go.”

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Johnny Cash's "When the Man Comes Around"
> 
> I'm going to cross out the kidnapping square on my DD bingo card with this fic
> 
> If you're interested in more melodramatic avocados and feelings come say hi on [tumblr](http://the-space-narwhal.tumblr.com/)


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